Developing and Sharing Student-Friendly Learning Targets

John Hattie's Visible Learning meta analyses and subsequent books provide evidence-based clarity for what works best in education. In all, Hattie studied six areas that contribute to the learning of a student. His research included Student effects, Home Effects, School Effects, Curricula Effects, Teacher Effects, and Approaches to Teaching and Learning. Using his work as a guide, collaborative teams can now begin to adopt the instructional practices proven to maximize impact on students' learning. The below list of ten core instructional practices was derived in part from Hattie's work, and incorporates much of what Mounds View PLCs are doing, or must do, to meet our Equity Promise.

For an in-depth description of best practice for each of these core practices, follow each of 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 are learning targets so important?
When teacher teams view a content area standard as a destination for learning, they can then write and articulate a series of learning targets that become the map their students will follow. When each day's target for learning is measured through a formative assessment, the results become a student's GPS; an indicator of their current location in relation to their end destination. This approach to instruction, whereby learning is visible to students such that they know and are able to articulate what they're learning, as well as where their current level of performance is in comparison to the success criteria, is critical if teachers are to integrate the other eight core practices.

What are best practices for Developing and Sharing Learning Targets?

Brookhardt & Moss (2012) write that when meaningful learning occurs in a classroom, it is often the result of a teacher's well written, well communicated and effectively measured target for learning. Whereas a learning objective is written broadly and from a teacher's point-of-view (students will be able to...), Moss & Brookhardt (2012) write that a learning target is to describe, in language that students understand, a lesson-sized chunk of information, skills, and reasoning processes that students will come to know deeply and thoroughly.  

The targets most likely to illuminate learning for kids are those that state the condition(s) under which students will show what they know or can do, as well as the criteria for success. Teachers can use the below A,B,C,D criteria to determine the extent to which their daily target makes the next step of the learning journey visible to kids.

A - Audience - is the target written using language students can understand and from a student's point of view? What vocabulary might need to be learned as part of communicating this target?

B - Behavior -  what verbs (action words) will you use? Is the level of today's learning surface or deep? How are the verbs in your learning target classified in Bloom's taxonomy?

C - Condition - Have you stated the condition(s) under which students will show what they know or can do? 

D - Degree - Have you stated the degree to which students will show their understanding?

An example learning target that meets the A,B,C,D criteria would be:

"Given a paragraph, I can identify every verb by circling it correctly."

Audience = "I can" 
Behavior = "Identify", "Circle" 
Condition = "paragraph", 
Degree = "every"

Although the idea that learning targets can provide increased clarity for students is widely accepted, many of the daily outcomes I've seen posted in classrooms are neither manageable within the scope of a single lesson, nor measured at the end of the lesson. It has also been my experience that students are rarely asked to think, write, or discuss the day's target. To maximize the impact of learning targets, teachers need to devote adequate time at the onset of the lesson for students to process what they are to learn and at the end of the lesson to measure what they know. 

Given the size of most standards, as well as the urgency to move through course materials quickly, teachers are prone to biting off more than students can chew. When writing a daily target for learning, it is important for teachers to consider what their students can master within a 45-90 minute lesson. Lemov (2010) gives the following example of a learning target that simply isn't manageable within a scope of a single lesson:

"I can add and subtract fractions with like and unlike denominators."

Although this might be acceptable as a two week objective for learning, students are unlikely to learn all of it in a single math lesson. In fact, you could break down this one target into four different single lesson outcomes:

Given a problem set of 10, I can correctly add fractions with like denominators 70% or more of the time.

Given a problem set of 10, I can correctly add fractions with unlike denominators 70% or more of the time.

Given a problem set of 10, I can correctly subtract fractions with like denominators 70% or more of the time.

Given a problem set of 10, I can correctly subtract fractions with unlike denominators 70% or more of the time. 

When teachers fail to articulate learning targets that are measurable, it is often because they're describing the day's agenda. While students might well know how you intend for them to spend their time, if they don't understand the learning that is to happen as a result of their work, their effort, motivation, and willingness to persist will be less. In addition, when a daily learning target can't be measured, students will fail to develop a sense for whether they're making progress, and teachers will be prohibited from evaluating the effectiveness of their instruction on students learning.