Pull Back the Curtain Toto!

Explicitly inform students and achievement will happen!

Pull back the curtain on learning!

Learning requires clarity in process and product.  Specifically, it is how the students will  learn through thinking or demonstrating and the measures of quality of the student work. 

What is the solution, clear and explicit success criteria!  

The criteria can be revealed at any point in the lesson.  Timing depends on the goal of the lesson.  For example, if you wanted students to demonstrate problem solving you would reveal explicit criteria later.  

The most critical idea to remember, however, is that the student knows when they have reached the learning intention by the end of the lesson.

Five Components  to create and understand learning intentions and success criteria.
(Hattie, 10 Mindframes for Learning, 2018)

1. Challenge: Students can learn to reflect and respond to where they are in the learning process as compared to success criteria.  They discuss their strengths and weaknesses.  
2. Self-Committment occurs when students are aware take responsibility for the learning.  This can be accomplished individually or within a group.
3. Self-Confidence allows the learner to take risks to 'have a go' and perservere through the task.
4. Expectations are revealed and allow learners to see the path toward successful completion of the task.
5. Conceptual Understanding is the journey between surface to deep understanding.  Deep understanding allows the student to retain the knowledge, skill or concept to help with more complex tasks in the future.

Consider the following examples as ways success criteria can be used in classrooms.  Notice how these Bloomer teachers used the 5 components in their lessons last week.

Success Criteria:  Poster

These posters allows the student to visualize learning in a second grade classroom.  Kate and Ken are working collaboratively to teach students how text features influence comprehension.  The learner can use the visual and written clues found on this chart to commit to the learning and choose an action to take when reading informational text.  Kate used the specific language found on the chart when conferencing with students. Ken shared a student example at the end of the lesson

Success Criteria:  Model

A model is an opportunity for students to complete assignments successfully with the support of an example.  Amanda used components found in the literacy resource to help students find key ideas and details.  They used them to write their own main idea.  She found that over 80% of students were able to reach the expectations of the learning intention.  This opportunity allowed students an independent pathway and achieve confidence with the learning.

Success Criteria:  Student Work

Paige used student response as sucess criteria and asked students to analyze the work against posted success criteria.  Students used the knowledge to revise their own writing.  She used student work that met and were close approximations so kids could evaluate quality.  They discussed in pairs allowing for socialization and analysis.  The result was a deeper understanding and ability to write to sources.  An option for the creative use of conceptual understanding and challenge.

                                Success Criteria:  Description with I can statements

              Having success criteria posted is a tried and true response.  Writing them in the form of  I can statements allows the student a visiable option for action.   I can describe, I can analyze, I can cite evidence, I can reread.  Becky has the intentions posted in plastic sleeves on the left side of the picture.  Additionally, she projected them during a lesson using the close reading companion.  She asked students to review their work against the criteria and revise.  This is a powerful option for students to commit to the expectations and provide confidence to learners.

The examples shared this week are from literacy lessons.  Each example can be utilized in math as well.  Models, student work, I can statements, co-constructed charts allow students an option to learn math skills and concepts.  Paul, Linday and Carol all use versions of these types of success criteria in this third grade math lesson.  These were used throughout the lesson and not at launch.  The expectation was that students inquire first in the problem solving. What was the result.  Lindsay's students scored 93% proficient on the daily formative!

 Your committment to making learning visible is directly related to the success you expect your students to achieve. 

Consider the following student questions and statements:

• What are my next steps?
• What is my goal today?
• Why is it important to me?
• When do I succeed?
• Now I have to show what I have learned!
• What I want to say to the lesson.

 Question to comment on this week:

What influence do success criteria have on how you use dialogic talk and the gradual release of responsibility?  How can you use the student question and statements in your planning and assessment?