Success Criteria & Self-assessment

As a continuation of 'where to next' in my inquiry, I have been focusing the past 2 weeks on the Learn-Scan part of our inquiry framework as this is where I had gaps. 

This 'scan' area looked at how engaged students are with their learning. Can they articulate what they are learning about? Can they monitor their learning? Do they know what their next learning steps are?

To help me with this was the Assessment for Learning power point on TKI

Above is one the slides I found most useful and made me reflect on my classroom environment and how well I communicate with students how they are doing in their learning. Some of the things I felt I did well were:

• Creating a learning environment in my classroom
• Using assessment information to feed back into teaching
• Provide timely focused feedback

Some of the things I needed more work on were:

• Co-constructing clear learning goals with students
• Involve students in self and peer assessment
• Clarify learning outcomes with students.

Upon reflection, it prompted one of the readings from Michael Absolums' book 'Clarity in the Classroom' (2006).

"For students truly to be able to take responsibility for their learning, both teacher and students need to be very clear about what is being learnt, and how they should go about it. When learning and the paths towards it are clear, research shows that there are a number of important shifts for students. Their motivation improves, they stay on-task, their behaviour improves and they are able to take more responsibility for their learning." 

 

From this, I focused students in on Success Criteria's. HOW will you know you have achieved the learning intention? So as I worked with each group, we broke down the learning intention and worked out what this will look like. Our discussions around the success criteria as a group gave me insight into whether or not students actually understood what learning was expected from the learning intention. It was great being able to co-construct the success criteria with each group. We tried to make it very specific so it was easy to self-assess. Here is an example of our final outcome for one group.

Example: 

WALT (We Are Learning To): Interpret information from a pie and bar graph

Success Criteria: I will know I have achieved this when:

1. I can say what the x and y axis show
2. I can give 2 facts from each graph