learning targets – Mrs. Kelly Love

roadmap: 2 mile mark

Here are some additional resources to my post ‘roadmap’ concerning learning targets, success criteria, and considering when and how to modify, abandon, or double-down:

How Clear Expectations Can Inhibit Genuine Thinking in Students

Throughout that first week of school and on into the school year, Karen was reliably consistent with her students. Still, the thinking remained largely elusive, and the culture seemed never to approach a true culture of thinking. Classes started promptly with a review of homework. New procedures were cheerfully explained, questions answered, and new practice sets given for homework. True to her word, scores were posted on the bulletin board beside the door each week, and students were informed at the beginning of class if any assignments were missing or late. At times it seemed like each student in the class had made an internal calculation regarding how much attention needed to be paid to complete the homework successfully or prepare for the looming test. Each student operated just slightly below this threshold and rarely stretched beyond it, creating an atmosphere of compliance and passivity.
https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/46442/how-clear-expectations-can-inhibit-genuine-thinking-in-students

A Critique of Instructional
Objectives by James McKernan*

Abstract
The ‘objectives model’ of curriculum planning, predicated upon behavioral performances, has become the dominant form of curriculum planning in Europe and elsewhere in the world. This paper argues that the objectives model is satisfactory for training or instruction, but falls down when applied to a true sense of ‘education’. The paper outlines 13 limitations on the use of educational objectives. It is argued that those interested in using objectives are guided by evaluation as an assessment rather than principles of procedure for education. Education is about the process of ‘travelling’ on an educational journey – not about ‘arriving’ at a destination.
Keywords: instructional objectives, limitations of objectives, curriculum planning, process model.

A Grading Strategy That Puts the Focus on Learning From Mistakes

Alcala also projects “favorite mistakes” on the board that they talk about as a class. And students get time to look at their own mistakes and figure out where they went wrong. The other advantage of highlighting is that she can call attention to things that she won’t necessarily take points off for, but that she wants students to notice. For example, she might highlight that they didn’t put the correct units in a word problem. They got the math correct, so Alcala is not worried they won’t be able to move forward, but she wants to remind them that units are important.
https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/52456/a-grading-strategy-that-puts-the-focus-on-learning-from-mistakes

roadmap

John Hattie’s learning target and success criteria work may be misused or misguided, and I am constantly searching on ways to improve these concepts of purpose for students.

https://teachersgoinggradeless.com/2019/02/09/thakor-learning-maps/?fbclid=IwAR36pHL6peNtTcqtW63cYqs_itCBSSM7ZgY77_QOPkhiimjwczwv6AOsjDI

One of my personal professional challenges is to practice and pursue the best possible use of learning targets and success criteria. And it’s come to my attention that most educators have strong opinions on their use, prescribed wording, and how students employ them.

Turns out, I’m not the only one who questions this. https://grantwiggins.wordpress.com/2013/12/05/mandating-the-daily-posting-of-objectives-and-other-dumb-ideas/

Effective vs. ineffective goal-setting. The aim is to ensure that students understand goals and how current activities support those goals. Ideally, then, the student has perspective and sees value in the work: they understand the why of the current work in order to find it more meaningful and to facilitate purposeful learning, and they have a touchstone for gauging progress (and thus use of time).

Think about any long meeting. We have an agenda not only to remind us of what we must accomplish but what action items should follow. Why is that useful to provide a written agenda at the start – and, importantly, keep referring to? Because we easily lose track of time or focus unwisely on less important matters than the goals require. In other words, an ongoing reminder of larger purpose (and a double-check on whether current talk is on-task and a good use of our time) is always wise, given human propensity to get lost in the moment. True for teachers as well as learners.Thus, the bottom line test of the effect of any school policy about goal posting is whether or not students learn better and have greater perspective because of it. For example, when asked, can students say why an activity is being done and why it matters and how it connects to prior work?

Alas, having hundreds of times asked students in class Why are you doing and learning this? I cay say that the results are not pretty. I dunno is the most common. (Older kids sometimes sullenly retort: I dunno; go ask the teacher.) And this is often in schools where there are posters on the wall or objectives on the board.

Continually trying to encourage students to read–and talk about ideas. Why is this so hard?

Back to Learning Maps. The author of the article, Azima Thakor, is a French teacher in Canada. She and her colleagues are practicing a gradeless classroom. When asked, her students say:

“Place yourself where you believe you’re doing in the class. The Learning Map helps with self-evaluation. The Learning Map helps communicate how you think you’re doing, the teacher checks in, then we can talk about relating that to a number. I like doing it because I know where I am so there are no surprises – I got what I deserved; I expect the result because I talked to the teacher about it; I know how I’m doing in class.”

Learning Targets are not ‘activities,’ but they are assessments. The trick is allowing students to understand and maintain agency in their success. This doesn’t mean a wild-west free-for-all, but allow the continuum of progress. In a robotic world, a student would parrot the LT/SC and “get it.” I like the idea of reframing the “I Can” statements:

Standards are not the same as learning targets. Here are three tips to consider when converting the former to the latter:

If a standard calls for multiple independent actions (e.g., I can identify a dog. I can identify a cat.), split it up into multiple learning targets.
Make sure all learning targets are in student-friendly language, because we ultimately want students to be able to leverage these targets to drive their own learning through self-assessment (assessment as learning).
To promote inquiry, present each learning target in the form of a question. (“Can I…?” instead of “I can…”)

Resources:

My attempt at next week’s learning map: https://docs.google.com/document/d/11dWAR5gPPAApBi3mIwZ-GmhZg3e6mXvISKKfTnRk7XQ/edit?usp=sharing

Writing Workshop Feedback Forms https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_HyVATymeztcNegjoC91pwtDQkj4sKRcZhqFEGSsaYU/edit?usp=sharing

Digital Content and Curriculum Self Assessment (put this together over a year ago for beginning computing skills course) https://docs.google.com/document/d/1g2yOztu7vyQ1wTSmvz4CGHzrWHCNC_fWI_147bsEEFg/edit?usp=sharing

Reading Life Guide I created to help students with IRLA: https://docs.google.com/document/d/11fbRvsFQAumTU1TRunbUcSfWPtKOGerFfCr7J2XNXM8/edit?usp=sharing

How to Focus Lessons and Learning Goals: https://www.edutopia.org/focus-student-learning-power-standards

Putting Students in Charge of Their Learning: https://www.edutopia.org/article/putting-students-charge-their-learning

Self-Assessment in Middle School: https://www.edutopia.org/article/self-assessment-middle-school

56 Examples of Formative Assessment https://www.edutopia.org/groups/assessment/250941

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1nzhdnyMQmio5lNT75ITB45rHyLISHEEHZlHTWJRqLmQ/pub?slide=id.gb49e70aa_480

like riding a bike…

Success Criteria need a makeover.

First, a terse, reflective question: what is my deal with learning targets and success criteria, anyway? * What, exactly, is my issue? Am I defensive and cranky because it’s “not how I was taught and I still managed to learn a lot of things anyway” notion? Is it the because it feels like another educational bandwagon that, including learning styles and grit, will be just another “this will fix it!” moment?

What do we get from learning targets and success criteria? Moreover, what do students gain? Because what I’ve witnessed are the following:

Students write down LT/SC in some kind of agenda/planner or notebook. Bike analogy: Today you will learn how to ride a bike. You will be successful when you ride a bike. (Specific: ride it several yards without falling down.)
Students sometimes reflect** on whether or not they met that metric. Several administrators have told me and other staff that the LT/SC must change daily. It is not a continuum of learning but a specific tight skill. Bike analogy: Put your foot on the bike pedal.
Evaluator comes in the room, notices if LT/SC are written in student-friendly language on the board, and will spot-check with students if they can ~~parrot~~ say what they are. Bike analogy: where the wheels fall off the bike is when the students are learning a new concept or skill, and have no idea really why they are learning it until they apply it. You are learning how to ride a bike: you have no idea where that bike will take you.

**This reflection is not automatic–it is one more thing to remind students to do. And it’s helpful — this is where we need to turn the conversation around.

Let’s try this:

Students write down LT/SC PLUS a reflection space for the why or possible application of the transferable skill.
Students focus on the mistakes that were made along the way –and the successes.
Evaluator comes in the room, asks them what they are learning, and then follows up with the teacher and students at a future date to read the students’ reflections and ideas about the mistakes, etc.

via GIPHY

“Alcala also projects “favorite mistakes” on the board that they talk about as a class. And students get time to look at their own mistakes and figure out where they went wrong. The other advantage of highlighting is that she can call attention to things that she won’t necessarily take points off for, but that she wants students to notice. For example, she might highlight that they didn’t put the correct units in a word problem. They got the math correct, so Alcala is not worried they won’t be able to move forward, but she wants to remind them that units are important.”
From A Grading Strategy That Puts the Focus on Learning From Mistakes

Please notice that this is a math teacher. Math instruction is the go-to for learning target and success criteria conversations. Evaluators can easily pinpoint it, and perhaps we ELA teachers bristle* because our subject area is essentially more abstract than concrete. Learning targets and success criteria that don’t work:

Learning Target: “Today you will learn how to pull the wings off of a butterfly of poetry in order to deconstruct its meaning and then carefully put it back together and still enjoy the same sublime and ethereal beauty.”
Success Criteria: Explain the quality and essence of beauty in a five- paragraph essay.

Okay, so –now what?

Let me try this for two weeks, and do a little teacher-research: click on this link to a Google Doc.

The plan is to provide the LT/SC written out in advance for students, and then have them fill in the rest–it will be a gradual release process as they build their own autonomy and ownership. Stay tuned for results, late January.

Three more for the road…

Spring break is over today, and while it was magnificent in many delightful ways, I’m fighting off the “Sunday” feeling. If I were choosing an overarching theme for this year it would be “Contradictions & Paradoxes: The Professional Dilemmas of Mrs. Love.” Wait, that’s a title, not a thematic description.

Oh well. Whatever.

The featured image of our district’s calendar says there are ten more weeks of school. “Normally” I would be ending the voyage, the journey with my ELA students by argumentative writing, onto memoir, and bowing out by saying, “See? I told you that would go fast!” and they would look at me in amazement at my sorcery and augur skills.

But I’m teaching semester classes this year, and it’s a bit disorienting. I have to make connections faster, and it doesn’t give a lot of time to build history and the ‘inside jokes’ but we’re doing all right. I can’t shake this feeling that other teachers are passing me by, and I’m still bogged down by unimaginative and muddied conversations.

There are some ideas I want to capture, though, three big ones from readings:

I. This is a long article from KQED/Mindshift, but worth the read.

How Do You Know When A Teaching Strategy Is Most Effective? John Hattie Has An Idea

A Model of Learning — From: https://www.nature.com/articles/npjscilearn201613/figures/1

Here is my warning*:

Too often educators apply an incredible concept and then try to truncate it and make it fool-proof. Paradoxically, this ends of doing more long-term harm to students and teachers.

Examples:

Grit.

Growth Mindset.

Learning Styles.

And maybe Hattie’s Success Criteria:

For Hattie, most learning rests on student understanding of the success criteria for a learning task. Hattie calls this a “prelearning phase” because if students don’t understand what it will take to be successful, they often act blindly and without motivation. He says that students who are taught the success criteria are more strategic in their choice of learning strategies, and thus more likely to encounter the thrill of success that will lead to reinvestment in learning.

Success Criteria are magnificent as assessments. As Hattie states, it’s a pre-learning phase, which means pre-assessment. They are an ASSESSMENT. Repeat: AN ASSESSMENT. They are not guarantees of learning the first time. If they were, then a computer could write them and score students, and they’d all receive 100% every time. That sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? For some administrators, writing the success criteria is tantamount to its first name only: Success. But the second part, Criteria, is where the learning and teaching happen.

They can be used as:

A student’s self-assessment
A teacher’s assessment and information on instructional steps
A means to articulate a goal or process
A reflective tool: see Caitlin Tucker’s work: http://catlintucker.com/2018/04/ongoing-self-assessments/ (I have years’ worth of student self-assessment and reflective pieces, but this is really good, too. Share and adapt!)

“Too often students may know the learning intention, but do not [know] how the teacher is going to judge their performance, or how the teacher knows when or whether students have been successful,” Hattie and Donoghue write in their article. When students understand how they will be evaluated they can also self-evaluate more effectively, a metacognitive skill that can help students become more independent learners.

How students gain initial content knowledge that they can then manipulate has long been a discussion among educators. Some argue students need to learn basic information before they can begin to use it. Others say students will learn information when it is critical to a problem or project they are trying to understand.

The Hattie/Donoghue learning model dives into that discussion, describing learning strategies that work best at the surface level, and those that help consolidate surface learning, as well as those that develop deep learning and work to consolidate deep learning. Lastly, Hattie and Donoghue deal with the idea of transfer, which broadly means being able to identify similarities and differences between problems and effectively apply previous learning to new situations.”

I have often wondered if our overemphasis on Learning Targets and Success Criteria stunt students’ true growth, that if they can parrot what they are, many students remain stuck at the surface level of learning. This is Hattie and Donohugh’s caution to us, and we should take heed. If the learning isn’t transferrable, then it’s not learning.

II. Jackie Gerstein Fills My Teacher Heart With Joy:

Just read it.

https://usergeneratededucation.wordpress.com/2018/04/15/educators-as-active-listeners/

III. Cult of Pedagogy to the rescue (again)

4 Ways Microsoft is Making Learning More Accessible

Since we are a Microsoft-centric district, I shared this with the staff, too, and more importantly, will be sharing it with students.

P.S. And someday, I dream of this level of collaboration and professional growth:

Be The Change

but for now, I’ll just keep on keeping on.

*Warning is too strong. How about one of these?

auguring, augury, forecasting, foretelling,predicting, prediction, premonition,presaging, prognosticating, prophecy (alsoprophesy), prophesying;

apprising,informing, notification, notifying, tip-off;

advice, counsel, guidance,recommendation, suggestion, tip;

announcement, declaration

Very dry.

very-dry

Currently, is there any topic that more widely confusing and debated than learning targets/success criteria?

Right about now, I’d love to adopt John Spencer’s Design Thinking, use and implement what I know from Kelly Gallagher, Kylene Beers, Donnalyn Miller, Pernille Ripp, and the writers at Ethical ELA, Marzano, DuFour, Mattos. Richard DuFour and Mike Mattos both clearly said the learning targets and success criteria do not have to change each day: it depends on the instruction. The clarity and teaching points are the important factors. But now I’m doubting my own ears, sensing their sage advice was a phantom, a mist…an illusion with a puff of confirmation bias.

But this is the current obstacle: the staff and district are so singularly focused on narrow interpretations of learning targets and success criteria tunnel vision is a distinct outcome, and I have witnessed that my students this year are less engaged, grudgingly compliant, and lacking in curiosity more than I’ve ever seen before.

Things are too dry, laid bare, and not engaging or interesting at all–it’s become very teacher-focused and demanding, and not supportive or interesting.

Time to shake things up.

Yes – know where students are going. Be clear. But engagement and inquiry mean the timing and creation of goals needs, nay demands, to be more student driven.

I am a firm believer in student reflection and discussion.

Here are what others say:

The Timing of Learning Targets: Make sure not to expose so as to decrease inquiry, especially in science.

Grant Wiggins:

Greetings Edutopiates, Grant Wiggins recently posted an article about the mandatory posting of Learning Targets / ELOs. Grant makes a great point in his post. Are you being mandated to post things as well? Mind you, I am fine with posting daily agendas, essential or driving questions, and even learning targets when they help students focus on their learning. How much is too much? Grant raises that question as well – he states: [quote]”…it’s important for students to understand the goals for the day and beyond. But does any supervisor honestly believe–if they would just think about it for one minute–that a policy requiring the chanting out of Standards numbers or making and hanging 4 teacher-crafted posters each day is in the best interests of learning and the best use of teacher time? This gets it all backwards.”[/quote] Posting? Sure! But for what purpose? Where do you think?

From the Grant Wiggins’ article:

So, while the intent of the poster policy makes sense, there is little or no benefit to merely requiring the posting. That gets it all backward, as the agenda analogy suggests. The posting is a means; the end is understanding of the meaning of the work and a way to stay on track. So, merely requiring the posting shows that the policy is really not for the learners at all but for the satisfaction of supervisors to make us all think that focused learning is happening (by osmosis?).

Here is where I contend not just learning target but teaching points are more valuable for students, along with more discussion, teacher feedback, etc. Tracking and parroting learning targets are a waste of time. However, analysis and reflection are not, and incredibly important: there is a huge difference with digging deeper with a skill or strategy and its purpose, and moreover, transference.

Changing learning targets and success criteria daily as a matter of course or procedure is also a waste of time, not best practices, and dismisses learning and mastery. Understand the nuance between process and content-driven targets.

Nowhere in this article by Marzano does he discuss a mandatory daily change, but getting in deep with the objectives and taxonomy. https://www.marzanoresearch.com/resources/tips/dtlgo_tips_archive

John Hattie:

Here is my takeaway from this: understanding what the ‘rules of the game are’ isn’t the same as not allowing students to craft and design. I sense many teachers/coaches are not understanding this nuance. Take his example of Australian football: if you told the students the rules of the game that doesn’t mean they’re going to be great football players– all that means is they are allowed to inquire and strategize of how to play the game well.

Do not confuse success criteria with strategies or mastery.

If our goal, our objective, as we’ve repeatedly stated is to have students drive their learning, the most effective measure by John Hattie, etc. then please consider who’s in control of their learning; the teacher or the student?

http://www.joebower.org/2011/10/stop-writing-objectives-on-board.html

Joe Bower passed away recently, and his voice is greatly missed, as is Grant Wiggin’s.

But I’ll carry on the work.

Agility.

For years, a continuing lament of teachers is students’ ‘learned helplessness.’ I witnessed this time and again: students who eschew pencils on the ground or break them then repeatedly asking for another, treating provided materials with disdain, echoing phrases of “I don’t know” or “I don’t understand,” and waging a war of attrition: who’s going to break first– me or them–when it comes to clarifying instructions or letting them become overly frustrated? (I usually just answer questions with questions, but somehow that doesn’t always inspire.) How could they NOT be getting this?! The learning targets and success criteria are written with great thought and precision every single day: why won’t they look at the board, and tuck into this delicious buffet of knowledge and enlightenment I’ve offered? The old phrase ‘students should work harder than the teacher’ often didn’t happen. Some folks think grit may be the answer, but to date no one knows how to ‘teach grit,’ or even if it should be taught.

If asked what the learning target/success criteria is for any given lesson, students are trained to parrot back what’s on the board, robotically and usually, joyless. If an evaluator is in the room, this signal from teachers to students is an expectation, and often students are pulled away and quietly asked, “What is the learning target today?” as a check-point for the teacher. The locus of control and agency shifts from student engagement to teacher accountability. And the learned helplessness increases.

I now know why.

And I want my colleagues to pay attention and collaborate with me, and see if we can do better.

How we learn to be helpless—and unlearn it

Learned helplessness keeps people in bad jobs, poor health, terrible relationships, and awful circumstances despite how easy it may be to escape. Learn how to defeat this psychological trap, thanks to the work of Martin Seligman.

BY DAVID MCRANEY

Here’s Seligman’s experiment in a nutshell: a box, electric shocks, dogs, and a tone. When the dogs hear the tone, receive a shock, they would jump to the ‘safe’ side. In the second group, they took away the tone, the dogs learned to prepare on their own, and learned to go to the ‘safe’ side. Bring back group one, no tone, and the dogs gave up –whimpered and cried–they learned that without the signal/tone, the dogs had no chance of an ‘epiphany’ or mindset growth.

When Seligman put those three groups in the room with the electric floors and wall, groups one and two quickly learned to jump over the wall when the tone alerted them to incoming shocks. The third group did not. Instead, they curled up on the floor and whimpered. The previous experiment had taught them there was no point in trying to figure out a pattern. It was as if they thought bad things just happen sometimes, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Even though they could have escaped the pain, they didn’t even try.

Could it be in all this talk about growth mindset having students parrot back learning targets is the complete opposite of what we’re asking them to do? Are we asking them to give up, that there is no point in trying to figure out what the purpose of any given lesson is because it’s handed to them?

We need to change things up, but what exactly? I did my own experiment last year, by which I covered up the learning target/success criteria, taught the lesson, and as an exit ticket had students write down what they thought the targets were. Approximately 60% of students were either spot-on (develop an argument as to whether or not aliens exist) or darn close (claim/evidence/reasoning) and about 30% confused it with the performance task (work well in a group/do group work). This happened toward the end of the year, so they had been accustomed to the ‘tone’ of the learning target all year, so that they stopped hearing it. By requiring them to think and reflect, they owned the lesson much more deeply.

Some might argue that learning targets and success criteria show students what happens in ‘the real world.’ Yes and no: depends on which ‘real world.’ Minimum-wage jobs have very strict guidelines and protocols, and do not encourage free-thinking or innovation. If you ask me today the weight and required temperature of a Starbucks’ latte I could probably recall that information. My husband and I were talking about this, and his 25 years of experience in design and UX tell a very different story: if you’re hired by a company in a salaried job, you’d better come prepared to think on your own, and offer your own insights and experience. No one gives you a ‘learning target’ script. This may be one cultural factor which Chinese and Indian educational systems speak of — they are highly trained in routine and computational thinking, but not innovation. Their words, not mine.

And just why is thinking critically so darn important, anyway? The world doesn’t come with warnings. I want my students to be hungry for learning when they come in my classroom, not passive and spoon-fed. I don’t want them to ask ‘why we have a bell?’ when I say I am the one to dismiss them. I want the end of the class to come as a surprise because they were so deep in their work they lost track of time. I have seen this less and less during the past two to three years of the “Learning Target/Success Criteria” regime. We need to spring from our haunches, prepare and adapt. It’s one thing to have drills and escape routes: that provides options. It’s altogether a different beast when we suffer from the notion that nothing we do will affect change. (Including taking down a flag as step one when there are so many other steps to take, too.)

Innovation’s enemy is learned helplessness. All of us need to be ready to jump and move. This has potential for deep implication in the inclusion model classroom, whereas in order to get all students moving forward, some have had years of entrenched learned helplessness and distract the teacher’s energy so that the process and purpose gets stuck in the mental mud.

The learning targets and success criteria should not become the ‘tone” for students to put aside all of their thinking, to passively accept they know the end game, so why play at all? This teacher activity (and observed by evaluators) has taken up way too much discussion and educational space for their return on learning time investment.

I would love your ideas and thoughts: I believe in purpose, I believe in objectives/goals/targets, and assessment and responsiveness. What ways do you keep students from wallowing in learned helplessness?