Developing and Sharing Success Criteria

In response to John Hattie's meta-analyses detailing what works best in education, the Mounds View Curriculum, Instruction and Assessment team developed a list of 10 core instructional practices proven to be highly effective. The developing and sharing of Success Criteria is number two on our list. When braided together, and effectively executed, these core practices will help collaborative teams meet our Equity Promise, which states that a student's race, class or disability will not be a predictor of his/her academic success.

For an in-depth description of best practice for each of these core practices, follow the links in the below list.

1.   Articulate student-friendly Learning Targets
2.   Share Success Criteria
3.   Formatively Assess students' understanding
4.   Adapt Instruction in response to formative checks for understanding
5.   Provide Actionable Feedback
6.   Actively Engage all students
7.   Ensure teaching and learning is Culturally Responsive
8.   Activate students as responsible for their and each others' learning
9.   Effectively integrate technology to enhance learning
10.  Develop students' Habits of Mind

Why is the sharing of Success Criteria with students so important?

Students are more likely to persist when they understand, and can describe, what the end goal for learning looks and feels like. Hattie says that learning targets without success criteria is "hopeless." Students operate with increased clarity around what is to be learned when their teachers effectively communicate learning intentions, and assign activities for students to compare successful end products (exemplars) to a kid-friendly rubric. Sharing targets and success criteria in this way, promotes self-directed learning, self-regulation, and self-assessment; characteristics of learners most likely to experience post-secondary success. 

What are best practices for developing and sharing Success Criteria with students?
In addition to articulating a learning target that establishes an acceptable level of daily performance, it is important to provide students with clear descriptions, levels and examples of the end goal for successful learning. As pictured below, Brookhardt (2013) suggests using the rings of a target as one way for students to compare their learning with what the teacher (or team of teachers) has determined are the levels of success. 

The use of analytic rubrics, or rubrics that are specifically designed for purposes of learning and feedback, is the most clear and effective way to detail learning criteria. Whereas holistic rubrics are often task-specific, designed for teachers, and used to produce a single score, an analytic rubric is to be used by students to compare their work to multiple, separate scales. Multiple scales enable students to pinpoint the strengths and weaknesses of their work related to each criterion. Embedded within an analytic rubric is feedback to students that lets them know exactly which elements of the skill were mastered, and which need more practice. Analytic Rubrics are intended to be high-inference work for students such that they have to critically think about and compare their work to each criterion. 

Hattie's Visible Learning research indicates student self-assessment has among the highest effect sizes. Part of teaching success criteria is getting students to reflect on their current level of performance. For purposes of designing an effective self-assessment rubric, teachers could use a scale common to analytic rubrics, such as:

Beginning

Developing

Secure

However, when having students self-assess a single, or small set of skills, the following scale provides teachers with a greater sense of their students' confidence:

I can't do this.

I can do this when my teacher helps me.

I can do this independently.

I could teach my classmates to do this.

As is the case with learning targets, rubrics ought to be written from a student point of view and in language they can understand. The below self-assessment rubrics were created for elementary to middle school aged children and use language and images responsive to who they are as learners and kids.

Toy Story Rubric

Princess Rubric

Ninja Rubric

Boy Band Rubric

Students will not immediately know how to compare their work to the learning criteria in a rubric. It is best, at the onset of learning, to have students process the success criteria by giving them a final product and having them compare it with the descriptions in your rubric. I found that using exemplars was most effective when I shared student examples that ranged from beginning to secure, as opposed to only sharing examples that exceeded proficiency. In fact, I realized quickly that it was best to challenge students to discover  what constituted exemplary work after they had met proficient criteria, and without the help of an exemplar.

 It is not enough for students to see a successful end product, they must know and be able to define why it's successful.  To illuminate the "why", I often had students work in small groups to discuss and find consensus for where the example assignment fell within the rubric. Students were as likely to discuss what was missing, or not done to expectation, as they were to determine what was exemplary.  I also found that giving small groups of students a first draft and final draft, and then asking them to use the rubric to identify the criteria the student likely used to improve their final product, was a highly effective way for them to view the feedback from the rubric as actionable. 

The last component to effectively sharing success criteria with students is to remain persistent if, or when, it does not appear to be having an impact on learning. Students are conditioned to care more about points than learning. Analytic rubrics do not produce the kind of feedback they're used to receiving (an A,B,C,D, or F).  Unlike a grade, feedback derived through the use of a rubric does not signal an end to learning; in fact, it often results in more thought and more effort on the part of students. Furthermore, writing an effective rubric in language your students can understand is difficult and requires constant revisions, which is why it is best to create success criteria in collaboration.

For more on Rubrics, check out this Powtoon Presentation: