Clarity about Learning

1. Clarity about Learning

2. Assessment For Learning Archway of Teaching Capabilities • Clarity about what is to be learnt • Learning Intentions • success criteria • relevance • exemplars • modelling • Assessment • curriculum understanding • Pervasive quality • Quality Management • Promoting Further • Learning • Learning Conversation • Feedback • Feed-forward • Active Reflection • About learning • student engagement • sense of partnership Shared Clarity about next learning steps Effective Learning Building Learning-Focused Relationships The archway is standing on a firm foundation of trusted and supportive relationships

3. Shared clarity about what is to be learnt • Learning Intentions • Success criteria • Relevance • Examples • Modelling

4. Learning Intentions The first ‘active’ element of formative assessment in the classroom is the sharing of Learning Intentions.” - Shirley Clarke

5. Be clear in your own mind • What it is that you want the students to learn or understand • Write it down in ‘teacher-speak’ Translate into student - speak • Take your ‘teacher - speak’ Learning Intention and put it into language that your students can understand clearly.

6. Judging the quality of learning intentions… • To make a list of all the words for ‘said’. Write a learning intention that captures the learning behind this activity.

7. Judging the quality of learning intentions… • To create text that clearly conveys the sense of a character. Reword this as a learning intention that students could more easily understand.

8. Judging the quality of learning intentions… • To write a recount about school camp. Rewrite this as a learning intention that is ‘context-free’.

9. Judging the quality of learning intentions… • Learning to use capital letters and full stops. Rewrite this so it captures the ‘deeper’ ideas inherent in the learning.

10. Where do you start?Learning Intentions may be derived from: • Linking to the National Curriculum • Other curriculum resources • Assessment that has identified a learning need (e.g., asTTle) • Reflective discussions between teachers and students that indicate the next learning step

11. Remember to Establish Relevance • Tell the students why they are learning this at all, or….… • Discuss with them when they think they will use/need this learning, or...…. • Share with them how it fits into the bigger picture

12. Follow the Learning Intention with an opportunity to create the Success Criteria • How will we know when we have met the Learning Intention? • How will we show that we understand what it is we are Learning? • What will be the evidence that we’ve learnt this? • What steps would lead us to achieving the learning?

13. ‘Product’ and ‘Process’ Criteria: Product: What it is about the finished product that shows you’ve been successful Process: What steps I could take to make sure the finished product is successful Depending on the learning, one may be more useful than the other.

14. Why have Success Criteria? • So the teacher and the students are clear about what it is they are going to be judged or evaluated on. • So the students have something definitive to refer back to when they want to check if they are on track or not. • So as to guide teacher and students in self, peer and student evaluation.

15. Co-construction of Success Criteria with Students • Discuss with students what success criteria are. • May begin by just giving students the success criteria • Explicitly model for students how to construct success criteria • Invite students to contribute to the success criteria • Timing / process will vary depending on the learning context

16. Model the Process or Examine an Exemplar An opportunity to see what we’re learning about and what it might look like – extra guidance for students. Modelling or examples can be used to co-construct the success criteria: • Stronger involvement by students • Students are making connection between the learning and the task • Much more challenging than being given the success criteria.

17. Examples / Modelling • National Exemplars of writing. • Journals/books/etc. • Teacher-written examples • Teacher modelling of a process • etc.

18. Global and Specific Learning Intentions: For example: Global: Learning how to persuade others in our writing. Specific: Learning to write the opening paragraph of an argument. More specific: Learning how to get the reader involved and interested in my argument from the start, or… Learning how to back up a point with convincing evidence.

19. Learning intentions, success criteria and task need to be separated but aligned. • The Learning Intention is what you want the students to learn or understand. • The Success Criteria answers the question “How will we know we have achieved this?” • The instructions for the Activitiesand Tasksdescribe the activities the students will carry out in order to learn

20. Alignment: LI: Learn how to describe an event in detail (so the reader gets a better picture) SC: I have written about: • What I could see • What I could hear • What I was feeling. Task: Re-write your introduction with more detail (or try a different event)

21. Check that students understand • Give frequent opportunities for students to check their understanding with you or one another • Give students time to think before responding to a question • Model for the students how they might think and share with others

22. Display L.I and S.C • These need to be visually displayed so you and students can refer back to them • Some ideas to save your time & the school’s money: • save LIs and SCs on the computer • record LIs and SCs once on a laminated card that can be shifted from the whiteboard to a display area. • Create a flip-chart or A3 Booklet so students can refer back to them

23. Recapping... ...the beginning steps • Clarify Learning Intentions at planning stage • Create a climate where students expect a Learning Intention • Explain the LI in student-speak and display it • Discuss the reason for learning this • Model the process or examine an exemplar • Invite students to say how we will know this has been learnt and write the Success Criteria • Introduce the task • Check the students understand • Get the students to refer back to the LIs and SCs

24. How the principles of ‘Clarity’ and ‘Partnership’ could be put into action • Follow the video and observe the elements of that are present