In today’s busy classroom environment, effective teaching strategies are essential for fostering student success.
Our favourite tools are learning intentions and success criteria. These tools provide clear goals and benchmarks for students, ensuring they understand what they need to learn and how to achieve it. By using learning intentions and success criteria, you can create a structured and supportive learning environment that promotes engagement, self-assessment, and continuous improvement. There’s no doubt that they are an easy way to ‘bump up’ your students to the next level!
Here are 20 compelling reasons why teachers should embrace learning intentions and success criteria to boost student success in the classroom.
- Clarity of Purpose: Learning intentions provide clear goals, helping students understand what they are expected to learn.
- Focused Learning: Success criteria outline the steps needed to achieve the learning intentions, keeping students focused on key tasks.
- Enhanced Motivation: When students know what they are aiming for, they are more motivated to engage with the material.
- Self-Assessment: Students can use success criteria to evaluate their own work and identify areas for improvement.
- Feedback: Teachers can give more precise and meaningful feedback when both learning intentions and success criteria are clear.
- Consistency: Provides a consistent framework for lessons, ensuring all students have the same understanding of objectives.
- Accountability: Helps students take responsibility for their learning by making expectations transparent.
- Differentiation: Allows teachers to tailor instructions to meet diverse learning needs while maintaining a common goal.
- Progress Tracking: Students can track their progress against the success criteria, fostering a sense of achievement.
- Communication with Parents: Clear learning intentions and success criteria help parents understand what their children are learning and how they can support them.
- Lesson Planning: Helps teachers plan lessons more effectively by focusing on clear objectives and the steps to achieve them.
- Improved Understanding: Clarifies complex topics by breaking them down into manageable, understandable parts.
- Collaboration: Encourages collaborative learning as students can discuss and work together to meet success criteria.
- Reduced Anxiety: Provides a clear roadmap for learning, reducing student anxiety about what is expected of them.
- Critical Thinking: Encourages students to think critically about their work and how it meets the success criteria.
- Engagement: Increases student engagement by making learning goals explicit and achievable.
- Goal Setting: Teaches students valuable goal-setting skills that are applicable beyond the classroom.
- Teacher Reflection: Helps teachers reflect on the effectiveness of their instruction and adjust as needed.
- Alignment with Standards: Ensures lessons are aligned with curriculum standards and learning outcomes.
- Celebrating Success: Makes it easier to celebrate student successes by clearly showing when and how learning goals have been achieved.
So there you have it! Using learning intentions and success criteria transforms the classroom into a more organised, focused, and supportive learning environment, significantly boosting student success. Still not convinced? Check out our references at the bottom of this post for additional reading.
How can I help you?
If you’d like some support to implement learning intentions and success criteria in your classroom, there are a few ways I can help you.
First of all, sign up for my FREE Bump It Up Wall Teacher Training. This training will help you to begin using learning intentions and success criteria in your classroom to give yourself and your students clarity on the teaching and learning happening in your classroom, help students to set clear learning goals, and help you to give students feedback to reach their goals.
You can also read my guide, How to Implement Learning Walls and Bump It Up Walls in Your Classroom. This guide takes you through my goal-setting/feedback cycle, using learning intentions and success criteria to set clear goals.
Finally, read my blog post , How to Co-Construct Success Criteria, for a student-led activity that will help your students immensely.
Here are some references that support the use of learning intentions and success criteria to boost student success:
Hattie, John. Visible Learning: A Synthesis of Over 800 Meta-Analyses Relating to Achievement. Routledge, 2009.
John Hattie’s extensive research emphasizes the importance of clear learning goals and criteria for success in enhancing student achievement.
Wiliam, Dylan. Embedded Formative Assessment. Solution Tree Press, 2011.
Dylan Wiliam discusses how formative assessment, including the use of learning intentions and success criteria, improves student learning and performance.
Clarke, Shirley. Outstanding Formative Assessment: Culture and Practice. Hodder Education, 2014.
Shirley Clarke explores practical ways to implement formative assessment, including setting clear learning intentions and success criteria, to improve teaching and learning outcomes.
Marzano, Robert J. The Art and Science of Teaching: A Comprehensive Framework for Effective Instruction. ASCD, 2007.
Robert Marzano outlines effective instructional strategies, including the use of specific learning goals and criteria for success to enhance student understanding and achievement.
Brookhart, Susan M. How to Create and Use Rubrics for Formative Assessment and Grading. ASCD, 2013.
Susan Brookhart explains how rubrics, as part of success criteria, can be used to provide clear expectations and feedback, supporting student learning.
Black, Paul, and Dylan Wiliam. Assessment and Classroom Learning. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 1998.
This foundational paper highlights the importance of clear learning targets and success criteria in formative assessment practices.
Moss, Connie M., and Susan M. Brookhart. Advancing Formative Assessment in Every Classroom: A Guide for Instructional Leaders. ASCD, 2009.
- his book provides a comprehensive guide on how to use formative assessment, including setting learning intentions and success criteria, to improve student outcomes.
Leahy, Siobhán, et al. Classroom Assessment: Minute by Minute, Day by Day. Educational Leadership, 2005.
The article discusses practical strategies for implementing formative assessment in the classroom, including the use of learning intentions and success criteria.
These references provide a strong foundation for understanding the benefits and practical implementation of learning intentions and success criteria in the classroom.