Step 6

Purpose

• Students performance increase when learning goals are clear.
• Monitoring progress through the use of specific scales enables students to self-reflect and take ownership of their learning.
• Clear goals and scales are helpful for providing specific feedback.
• Scales allow students to see their progress.
• Scales highlight the skills and knowledge that relate to the levels of mastery.
• Scales are a formative assessment of students' learning guiding them toward mastery.
• Scales help teachers 'chunk' content into appropriate 'bites' students can handle.

Learning Goals

A statement of what students will know and be able to do. Dr. Marzano suggests two formats, one for declarative knowledge or information (represented as: “Students will understand…”) and one for procedural knowledge or strategies, skills, and processes (represented as: “Students will be able to…”).

• Declarative Knowledge
  • Informational knowledge; Declarative knowledge is developed through review, revision, error analysis, and identification of similarities and differences.
• Procedural Knowledge
  • Knowledge that is oriented towards skills, strategies, or processes; over time, this knowledge is shaped by the learner. When fully developed, it can be performed at the level of automaticity or controlled processing. This is developed through practice over time.

A learning goal identifies what students will learn or be able to do as a result of instruction, separate from what they do to demonstrate the learning. Learning activities and assignments help student reach learning goals.

• Should Be
  • Overarching (Unit Goals)
  • Clear Statements of Knowledge and Information (Not Activities or Assignments)
  • Posted and Able to be Read by Students
  • Written in Student-Friendly Language
  • Referenced During the Lesson
• Students
  • Should be Able to Explain the Learning Goal
  • Should be Able to Explain How Their Current Activities Meet the Learning Goal

Scales

When learner goals have been articulated in scale format, the teacher and students have clear direction about instructional targets as well as descriptions of levels of understanding and performance for those targets. (Marzano, 2007).

• Should Be -
  • Related to the Learning Goals
  • Posted and Able to be Read by the Students
  • Written in Student-Friendly Language
  • Referenced During the Lesson
• Students
  • Should be Able to Explain the Meaning of the Levels and Their Progress Toward Level 4

What does it look like? (See Samples on Element 1)