Effective teachers set and communicate clear lesson goals to help students understand the success criteria, commit to the learning, and provide the appropriate mix of success and challenge.
Strategy Overview:
What is it?
Lessons need clear learning intentions with goals that clarify what success looks like. Lesson goals always explain what students need to understand, and what they must be able to do. This helps the teacher to plan learning activities, and helps students understand what is required.
How effective is it?
Research shows goals are important for enhancing performance. It is important to set challenging goals, rather than ‘do your best’ goals relative to student starting places (Hattie, 2009).
Considerations
Learning goals must provide challenge for all students. By setting challenging goals, the teacher develops and maintains a culture of high expectations.
Learning goals should be achievable for students of varying abilities and characteristics. They must also have a firm base in assessed student needs. Assessment provides teachers with evidence of prior learning, and the information they need to set goals that offer each student the appropriate level of stretch/ challenge.
Effective teachers design assessment tasks that require students to demonstrate knowledge and skills at many levels. Tasks will include lower order processes like comprehension, and higher order processes like synthesis and evaluation.
When teachers explain the connections between learning goals, learning activities and assessment tasks, then students can use learning goals to monitor and progress their learning.
This strategy is demonstrated when the teacher:
assesses students’ prior knowledge
uses evidence to differentiate learning goals for groups of students based on need
demonstrates a purpose for learning by linking a specific activity to the learning goals
provides realistic but challenging goals, and recognizes effort towards achieving them.
This strategy is not demonstrated when the teacher:
implies by words or actions that some students are not expected to achieve the learning goal
praises all work regardless of quality and effort
assesses student work against other students’ work, rather than against prior achievement and individual learning goals.
This strategy is demonstrated when students:
actively engage with the learning goals to plan their own learning
self-monitor their progress, and provide evidence they believe demonstrates they have achieved their goals
frame future learning goals based on identified strengths and areas for improvement.
Examples that illustrate the strategy:
Example 1: Secondary - Health and Physical Education
The Health and Physical Education (HPE) Team at a Melbourne secondary school invited the Professional Learning Coordinator to their Team meeting to discuss using goal setting and success criteria for the upcoming Year 8 Dance Unit. The Team wanted to ensure students developed the required knowledge, understanding and skills identified in the achievement standard. Discussion during the meeting underlined the importance of providing students with clear learning intentions, success criteria and a common assessment language. The Team decided to create a unit plan that included a proficiency scale for the unit, with clear learning intentions and success criteria for each lesson in the unit.
At the start of the dance unit teachers presented their students with a unit overview, and provided them with opportunities to demonstrate their current knowledge and skills on a proficiency scale. Students were also introduced to the unit’s learning intentions and success criteria so they could self-monitor their progress throughout the unit.
At the end of the dance unit, students reviewed the proficiency scales, and self and peer-assessed their gains in knowledge and skills. Teachers supported individual students to identify their strengths and areas for improvement, and to set new learning goals. HPE teachers collected the data and used it for overall student assessment, and to support reflection on the impact of their teaching practice.
Using proficiency scales allowed students and teachers to recognize prior learning levels, and created opportunities to reflect on student growth in engagement and academic outcomes. Consistently articulating learning intentions and success criteria allowed teachers to set challenges that fostered student commitment to learning, and built their confidence in attaining the learning intentions.
Example 2: Secondary - Whole School Approach
At an outer suburban secondary college, the Attitudes to School Survey results revealed a high level of student disengagement. Students reported learning was not engaging. Parents complained their children were often unable to articulate what they learnt at school. The school leadership team decided to respond with a suite of whole school initiatives that would roll out progressively through the year. The interventions focused on making learning visible to students. The first step was to implement a consistent approach in every lesson to setting goals and success criteria.
Resources were allocated to support the initiative. Over the summer holidays all classrooms were fitted with small whiteboards with pre-set sections for learning outcomes, success criteria, activities and review questions. During the professional development and planning day at the start of Term 1, all teachers were trained to use the mini-whiteboards, and to develop learning outcomes clearly linked to lesson activities and success criteria. During Term 1, Professional Learning Communities focused on supporting implementation of the strategy and monitoring its impact on student learning.
By the end of Term 2, after achieving a high level of consistency and precision in using the mini-whiteboards, teachers reported an increase in student engagement. The results of a student survey were even more promising, showing a sharp increase in engagement with learning, even when teachers had not yet noticed shifts in performance.
In Term 3, teachers continued to evaluate the effectiveness of their practice, monitor student engagement and learning, and seek feedback from colleagues and students to gauge the impact of changed practices.
Continuum of Practice:
Emerging
Teachers set learning goals that explain what students need to understand, and what they must be able to do.
Teachers use student assessment data and prior learning to set learning goals.
Teachers design learning activities and assessment tasks that reflect the learning goals.
Evolving
Teachers set explicit, challenging and achievable learning goals for all students, drawing on students’ backgrounds, interests and prior knowledge.
Teachers work together to design learning activities and assessment tasks that require students to demonstrate knowledge and skills at many levels.
Teachers make explicit the connections between learning goals, learning activities, and assessment tasks.
Embedding
Teachers develop and maintain a culture of high expectations for all students by setting challenging learning goals.
Teachers use moderation of student assessment tasks to refine learning goals, and to provide appropriate levels of challenge for each student.
Teachers support students to use learning goals to monitor and progress their learning. They encourage students to review and set their own learning goals.
Excelling
A culture of high expectations for all students is embedded. Students regularly set their own learning goals, self-reflect and evaluate, and share feedback with peers.
Teachers support students to use evidence to personalize and revise their learning goals, based on identified strengths and areas for improvement.
Teachers use data to evaluate the impact of setting goals to raise achievement and engagement levels.
Evidence Base:
Hattie, J. (2009). Visible Learning: A synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement. Milton Park, UK: Routledge.
Kyriakides, L., Christoforou, C. and Charalambous, C. (2013). ‘What matters for student learning outcomes: A meta-analysis of studies exploring factors of effective teaching,’ Teaching and Teacher Education, 36, 143-52.
Lemov, D. (2015). Teach like a champion 2.0: 62 techniques that put students on the path to college. San Francisco, USA: Jossey-Bass.
Marzano, R. J. (2007). The art and science of teaching: A comprehensive framework for effective instruction. Alexandria, USA: ASCD.