Learning Targets

At the beginning of the school year our school engaged in staff development centered on learning targets.  Our goal was to move our people forward in their understanding and utilization of learning targets as they align with assessments.  This was particularly important as many of our dyad teams had a new member and/or new curriculum.  The teachers were asked to self-select their level from these three choices:

• My dyad can agree on or create common kid friendly learning targets from our standards. (What is a learning target?  Are there already-created learning targets for our courses?  Are the learning targets clear?  Are the learning targets good?)

• My dyad can directly link summative assessments to learning targets. (Does each part of my summative assessment show an outcome based on a learning target? Do my formative assessments prepare students for the summative assessment? Do my formative assessments provide information for students relating to their progress on meeting the targets?)
• My dyad can implement a new strategy for students to assess their own learning based on targets. ( Does the student know the learning target for the day? Does the student know where they are at in reaching that target and/or do they know what they need to do in order to reach that target? Can the student articulate where they are at on a continuum of progress?)

The following are some examples from around our building and that our awesome leaders presented during staff development on October 16, 2013:

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Spanish:

Science:

Math:

I really believe that we have amazing educators that have worked hard on improving their instructional practices for high student achievement.  The work on learning targets compliments the work with standards based grading so that there is a depth to the pedagogical improvements.  I am hopeful that this will result in higher student achievement as we progress through the school year.  While we have been on this journey, we have utilized the following book as a resource for our work on learning targets:

“When students self-assess and set goals they develop an internal sense of control over the conditions of their success and greater ownership of the responsibility for improving.”
– Seven Strategies of Assessment for Learning, Jan Chappuis