Learning Targets
Outcomes
It's long been an expectation at Renaissance and in Expeditionary Learning schools, to provide students with learning targets. Why?
The process of learning shouldn't be a mystery to students. Learning targets provide them with tangible goals that they can understand and work toward.
Learning targets are goals for the lessons, projects, and units. They are written in concrete, student-friendly language - beginning with the stem "I can" - shared with students, posted in classroom, and tracked carefully by students and teachers during the learning process.
The term 'target' is significant. It emphasizes that students are aiming for something specific. They are meant to be used by students. Every day, students discuss, reflect, track their progress, and assess their work in relation to learning targets. How might learning targets support students as they talk about their learning during Student Led Conferences? Portfolios?
When to introduce the learning targets can vary. In many lessons, the target is shared at the start of the lesson and then referred to throughout as teachers and students assess progress. Some teachers have students read the targets aloud, restate them to classmate, or discuss them in small groups to ensure that they understand what they are aiming for. Teachers can choose to collaborate with students in revising them to be more clear, compelling, or measurable, and even in creating new learning targets.
For some lessons it's better to hold off on sharing learning targets until partway through the lesson. For inquiry lessons, it is often best to hold off revealing targets. After discussing the ideas that emerge, the learning targets can be introduced to frame the next steps of work.
Sometimes we need 'nested' learning targets - the steps necessary to build towards a larger target. For example, while collaborating with students on a target where students will analyze something, together the teacher and students will notice that in order to analyze they will first need to identify, etc. and write those learning targets together.
You'll notice I used the word 'collaborate' in some of these explanations. On the CITE rubric the goal is to collaborate with students on outcomes (learning targets). I've shared several examples of how this might look in practice.
So, how are you doing with learning targets? Have we established a school-wide practice that ensures that learning targets are communicated and understood? Will I see them in your classroom? Are they leading your planning, assessing and instruction in all things?
Clear learning targets can help teachers make decisions about what to teach and how to assess learning. Learning targets are one part of a comprehensive student-engaged assessment system.
Do we need to have explicit learning targets for the 21st Century Skills and 4C's? How would you answer that? Do your learning targets reflect your answer? Do we understand how our daily learning targets are connected to Enduring Understandings? To our Essential Questions? (Do we post these?) How do we weave all this learning target work into something kids understand and connect with?
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| Working collaboratively with students to unpack targets and make sense of them and then to set some goals. |
Check out what Pam has to say about learning targets and intentionality - link to her blog:
I really want to encourage and support you to have dialogue together about your questions, practices, trials, and discoveries using Learning Targets. Share what you are doing. Share what isn't going so well and ask for help. I'll be providing you with feedback as I visit you in your classrooms.
Calendar:
Sept. 15 - 19th:
Monday:
Leadership Team meeting 4:15 - 5:00 p.m.
Debbie and Suzie out for Every Child a Writer training
Tuesday:
* iReady training for using this tool to progress monitor - 8:00 a.m.
* No RTI meeting
Brittany's Crew leaves for Voyage
Debbie and Suzie out for Every Child a Writer training
Baskin Robbin's Community Night 4-8pm
SAC meeting 5:30 p.m. - District Strategic Plan Presentation
REA meeting 7:00 p.m.
Wednesday:
PD: Presentation of the District Strategic Plan
Friday:
4th grade fieldwork to Molly Kathleen Mine - Deborah gone from building to support fieldwork
1st grade fieldwork in a.m.
Discovery 5/6 fieldwork to Saint Mary's Glacier
Sept. 22nd - 26th:
Monday:
Nicole's Crew out on Voyage
Tuesday:
* RTI meeting 7:30 a.m.
Debbie out of the building for PLS meeting
Wednesday:
CITE 6 Team meeting 12:00 - 4:00
PD: Individual plan
Friday:
No Students - Teacher Professional Development Day
FYI: Student Led Conferences are scheduled for the week of Sept. 29th - our last week before Fall Break.
iReady
Progress Monitoring
We've used iReady to establish a baseline. We need to move forward using it to progress monitor growth and achievement. Elisha will be offering a training demonstration for how to use iReady for progress monitoring on Tuesday, September 16th at 8:00 a.m.
I'm going to ask that you use iReady to administer a progress monitoring assessment each time we return from a break - so the first one would be directly after Fall Break. It will take approximately 10 minutes for reading and 10 minutes for math.
The time frame of progress monitoring may not correlate with the time frames mandated by the READ Act. So, we might need to talk about what makes sense and make some adjustments. It might also be that we will want to progress monitor some students more frequently than every 8 weeks (roughly the time between breaks.) I'm flexible in my thinking about 'when', but certain that we do need to be progress monitoring.
Have a wonderful weekend!
Deborah
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