Success Criteria, Learning Targets, Standards Oh My! by Kristen Fusaro-Pizzo

 Success Criteria, Learning Targets, Standards Oh My! by Kristen Fusaro-Pizzo

Keeping up with the latest educational rhetoric may be more fast-paced than Tik Tok, Twitch, and Snapchat combined, which can leave teachers feeling exhausted and overwhelmed. 

We're hoping to bring some clarity to the confusion and put your mind at ease. 

If we’re looking at it through a physical metaphor:

1. Standards

   1. Curricula

      1. Learning Targets

         1. Content & Skills

            1. Success Criteria

               1. Assessment

                  1. Single-Point Rubric

                     1. Feedback

                        1. Reflection

Standards:  Educational standards are the learning goals for what students should know and be able to do at each grade level. These are NOT to be confused with curricula. 

Curricula: How students will achieve the learning goals for each grade level (the standards). The curricula are comprised of content and skills. This will combine the “big picture” of the course - themes, units, assessments, essential questions, deeper understandings - and how they all intertwine. 

Learning Targets: These have traditionally been called “Aims.” They consist of content, skills, or sometimes both, that students should achieve “daily” (we put “daily” in quotes because we recognize some Learning Targets are more complex than others).

Content:  The specific material chosen for the course. For example, a physical education class may focus on HIIT workouts for one unit of content and yoga/restorative practices for another unit of content. 

Skills: Skills are the methods by which students learn the content. These should be transferable to any content. For example, understanding what “sine, cosine, and tangent” are is a necessary skill for the course contents of geometry and trigonometry. 

Success Criteria: These are, essentially, the tasks necessary to get students to achieve the Learning Target (whether that’s part of the daily task or a bigger assessment). We like to think of it as a “checklist” of explicit and clear steps that students need to take to achieve the bigger goal. Students should then be able, on their own or with each other, to reflectively review the criteria to note how he/she is doing.  

Assessment: Assessments are the means by which we understand student progress.  This is how we determine how much learning a student has acquired over a period of time. Assessments can be summative, which is meant to evaluate students at the end of a learning experience. More frequently, assessments are formative, which evaluates students throughout a learning experience. Assessments should be aligned to success criteria so that students can evaluate their own progress.

Single-Point Rubric: The Single-Point Rubric outlines the success criteria for how a student will be evaluated on an assessment. It allows for a more holistic approach to offering feedback.  While a traditional rubric would scale “Not Yet (1), Developing (2), Approaching (3), Mastery (4),” Single-Point Rubric addresses only on the “Mastery” end of the spectrum focusing solely on high expectations. 

Feedback: Feedback is how students receive information about their learning and progress. Feedback can be direct from educator-to-student, from student-to-student, or from student-to-self. Feedback is how a student can understand where he/she needs more support to achieve mastery. 

Reflection: The ultimate and final goal of the whole educational process is reflection because the point of reflection is the epitome of independent learning. Reflection asks students (and educators) to deconstruct and analyze the process. What went right? What went wrong? Why?  This is the point where students should be able to refer back to the feedback they received and the success criteria to determine what level of mastery they have achieved. 

Are there any other terms you would like clarification on or strategies for how to use these in your classroom?  Let us know by sending an email to teacherleaders@sitechhs.com.