Throughout the past two years, I have found myself in more
classrooms observing teaching and learning than I have at any other point in my
career. It is exciting to see the complexity of tasks our students are navigating
at every level. The depth of conversations I have had with our teachers and
principals have never been greater.
After a recent classroom visit, a teacher sent me a follow-up
email and asked what I was looking for during my short stay. It’s a great
question, and one I’m happy I was asked. During a ten-minute visit to a
classroom, I am generally looking for evidence of three things: classroom
routines, positive relationships and clear learning targets.
Classroom routines shorten the transition time between
tasks, help students predict what is coming next and reduces (if not
eliminates) most student management issues. Positive student-to-student and
student-to-teacher relationships are the foundation for learning in a classroom.
Students do not learn from, nor do they collaborate with, people they don’t
like. The last variable I am looking for is well articulated learning targets
posted in language students can understand. When students have a clear
understanding of what the focus of their work is and what they should be
learning, they are better able to make meaning out of what they are being asked
to do. Learning targets are not “to do” lists. “Students will research the Bill
of Rights,” is not a learning target. “I
can explain how the struggles of the Colonists in Massachusetts impacted the
writing of the first amendment to U.S. Constitution,” is an example of a learning
target.
Throughout my classroom visits I have observed many examples
of good learning targets. I continue to be impressed by the quality of work and
depth of knowledge our staff holds.
An elementary principal sent me the article below. The piece
begins with the most current research that supports the importance of using
learning targets at all grade levels and goes on to talk about what good learning
targets are and are not. Please take five minutes to read this short article
and match your learning targets against the author’s criteria.
Learning Targets On Parade
An 8th grade math
teacher is introducing a lesson on exponents, and we’re watching a video of her
class. The purpose of her lesson, according to the material that accompanies
the video, is for students to discover and then describe the rules for multiplying
exponents. But you’d never know it from the lesson. The teacher defines
exponents and illustrates exponential growth with cubes and then with a graph.
Students get excited about this and begin to ask questions about exponential
growth, only to be told that’s not what their lesson is about today.
On the board, the
teacher shows students how to multiply exponents and then tells them to begin
work on a worksheet. By the time the students actually start doing their work,
most of us watching the video feel misled. First we thought the students were going
to learn about growth, and then we thought they were going to discover their
own principles for multiplying exponents. When it’s all said and done, all they
got to do was reproduce the teacher’s logic on a worksheet.
This video is a
great argument for the importance of learning targets. Teachers who watch it
can see that students have a hard time figuring out what they’re supposed to be
learning and why. For example, one student excitedly asks, “Oh, would that be a
parabola?” and the teacher replies that they’ll talk about that in a future
lesson. (If you want to see for yourself, watch the first 10 minutes of the
video atwww.timssvideo.com/69.)
What the
Research Says
Clear learning
goals help students learn better (Seidel, Rimmele, & Prenzel, 2005). When
students understand exactly what they’re supposed to learn and what their work
will look like when they learn it, they’re better able to monitor and adjust
their work, select effective strategies, and connect current work to prior
learning (Black, Harrison, Lee, Marshall, & Wiliam, 2004; Moss, Brookhart,
& Long, 2011). This point has been demonstrated for all age groups, from
young children (Higgins, Harris, & Kuehn, 1994) through high school students
(Ross & Starling, 2008); and in a variety of subjects—in writing (Andrade,
Du, & Mycek, 2010); mathematics (Ross, Hogaboam-Gray, & Rolheiser,
2002); and social studies (Ross & Starling, 2008).
The important
point here is that students should have clear goals. If the
teacher is the only one who understands where learning should be headed,
students are flying blind. In all the studies we just cited, students were
taught the learning goals and criteria for success, and that’s what made the
difference.
It’s not enough for
a teacher to plan a learning target and tell students about it once. Writing a
learning target on the board but not having students do anything with it during
the lesson won’t harness the learning energy these studies describe. This sort
of lip service to learning targets is what Marshall and Drummond (2006) call
conforming only to the “letter” and not the “spirit” of assessment for
learning. A learning target theory of action calls for teachers to design the
right target for the day’s lesson and use it along with their students to
aim for and assess understanding. Students have the learning target in mind as
they do their work, and they filter what they do during a lesson by asking
themselves how this activity or assignment will help them hit that target.
Having a learning
goal for students means more than just having a great learning target for
today’s lesson. All the learning targets from a sequence of lessons must add up
to a larger unit goal or state standard. It’s also not enough to have only the
larger goal. Students experience learning one lesson at a time, so they need to
know what they’re supposed to be learning during each lesson. Each daily
learning target needs to add a subsequent level of challenge or increase
students’ understanding or skill from the previous lesson and prepare them for
the lesson that follows.
What Are
Learning Targets?
A learning target
describes, in language students can understand, what students will learn in
today’s lesson. That description can be accomplished through words, pictures,
demonstrations, or other experiences; it doesn’t have to be in an “I can”
statement. A learning target should
- Describe for students exactly what they’re going
to learn by the end of the day’s lesson.
- Be in language students can understand.
- Be stated from the point of view of a student who
has yet to master the knowledge or skill that’s the focus of the day’s
lesson.
- Be embodied in a performance of
understanding—what the students will do, make, say, or write during the
lesson—that translates the description into action. A performance of
understanding shows students what the learning target looks like, helps
them get there, and provides evidence of how well they’re doing.
- Include student look fors (sometimes
called criteria for success) in terms that describe mastery of the
learning target rather than in terms of a score or grade.
Learning targets
should describe learning, not activities. If you find yourself describing an
activity (Students will write five sentences), ask yourself, “What will
the students learn by doing that?” (I can write sentences that tell complete
thoughts).
Also, because
teachers are so used to thinking in terms of unit goals or other “chunks” of
the curriculum (learning long division, learning how to do persuasive writing,
learning about photosynthesis), they sometimes repeat the same learning target
day after day to give students more practice with the skill or concept. To plan
a series of lessons in which students see where they’re going
and help you get them there, you need more than that.
Each day, students
should know what new content they’re learning and how they’re sharpening their
skills. Are they learning a new concept? Extending understanding by building on
a previous concept? Combining concepts to form more sophisticated
understandings? Practicing a skill for accuracy or fluency? Applying a skill
they already know to new content? Clarifying the target helps students
understand exactly what they’re supposed to focus on, helps them monitor their
learning, and—because autonomy and control are major motivators—makes learning
and practice more engaging.
Learning—Or
Doing?
Let’s start with a
counterexample. One teacher we know started a unit on literary language with
this goal: “ Students will learn that point of view and figurative language
help tell a story.” In her mind, that became the learning target for all the
lessons in the unit. So the daily learning targets she presented to students
were statements like these: The students will put examples of
figurative language on cards and sort them according to type, The students will
identify two examples of simile and two examples of metaphor in Jean Craighead
George’s Julie of the Wolves, and so on.
This teacher had
some good ideas for potential performances of understanding. The part she
skipped was showing students what all this activity would help them learn so
they’d see the purpose in the activities and know what to focus on. The reallearning
targets could be summarized like this:
- I can define simile and recognize examples in
literature.
- I can define metaphor and recognize examples in
literature.
- I can distinguish metaphors from similes.
- I can explain how metaphors and similes enhanced
the storytelling.
- I can describe and identify examples of different
points of view.
- I can explain how the point of view affected the
story.
One or two such
targets add concepts and skills in small increments each day.
There are several
advantages to spelling out learning targets by describing what students are
going to learn and then embodying them with plans for what
students will do, rather than rolling them all into one. When
students have learning targets articulated in this way, they can answer the
question, “What are you trying to learn?” They begin to see learning as growing
a body of knowledge and skills, rather than checking off a series of
assignments.
As for the
teachers, they begin to see the activities they select as samples from among
all the other possible things students could do to learn today’s lesson, rather
than as the purpose for the lesson itself. This helps with all sorts of
instructional moves, including differentiation for various learners’ needs and
extension of learning for those who can already do the day’s activity.
What It Should Look
Like
The two examples
that follow show how a parade of learning targets builds a learning trajectory
that leads students to a larger instructional goal. Moreover, they clarify the
difference between what students will learn and what they will do.
In an
Elementary Classroom
Ben Golab teaches
2nd grade at Lenape Elementary School in Ford City, Pennsylvania. His
mathematics unit on subtracting with double digits consisted of a series of
five lessons. The first lesson’s learning target was, I can subtract a
one-digit number from a two-digit number without regrouping (borrowing), using
cubes. The performance of understanding included modeling subtraction
problems of this type with math cubes.
The
discussion and questioning focused on concepts of numbers and operations—for
example, that no regrouping was needed because the cubes representing the top
number were numerous enough to take away the number of cubes representing the
bottom number. Mr. Golab also told his students how what they were doing with
cubes today would lead to what they would do with pencil and paper tomorrow.
The learning
target for Lesson 2 was, I can subtract a one-digit number from a
two-digit number without regrouping, without using cubes.
Lesson 3’s target
was, I can subtract a one-digit number from a two-digit number with
regrouping, using cubes. During this lesson, as for the others, the teacher
circulated around the room and gave students feedback. He used strategic
questioning to help students see that regrouping using cubes in subtraction
worked in the opposite way from how they regrouped using cubes in addition,
emphasizing mathematical reasoning. He said, “Remember for subtraction we start
at the top of the problem to decide about regrouping, not at
the bottom like we do for addition. Which number is bigger here, top or bottom?
Do you need to regroup?”
For Lesson 3, the
teacher focused especially on one of the criteria for success—I use
regrouping when the problem needs it, and I don’t use regrouping if it doesn’t.When
students couldn’t make this distinction, the teacher pulled them aside and
worked with them on problems that didn’t require regrouping until they were
ready to move on to problems that required regrouping.
Lesson 4’s
learning target was, I can subtract a one-digit number from a two-digit
number with regrouping, without using cubes. Again, students realized
that they were building on their concrete learning from the previous lesson to
learn how to subtract using paper and pencil. Most of them came to this
realization on their own, because moving from Lesson 3 to 4 followed the same
pattern they used to move from Lesson 1 to 2—from cubes to paper.
Lesson 5’s
learning target was, I can subtract a two-digit number from a two-digit
number with regrouping. Students applied what they had learned about
subtracting two-digit numbers that required regrouping in the ones place; they
were just adding one more piece—subtracting in the tens place.
These learning
targets moved students step-by-step from readiness—they already knew about
one-digit subtraction and how to represent numbers with math cubes—to the
larger learning goal of two-digit subtraction. This learning goal was the destinationfor
the parade, not the learning target for each lesson. Each lesson took the
students one step farther down the road.
In a
Secondary Classroom
Joe Cali’s 10th
grade government class at Ford City High School in Pennsylvania was studying a
unit on the federal bureaucracy. The teacher planned a series of eight lessons.
In previous units, the students had examined the powers of the president of the
United States and how they carry into the three branches of government. They
had examined the checks and balances designed into that structure and their
relationship with presidential power.
In this unit,
students were going to learn how to categorize the federal bureaucracy into
three subunits (the executive office of the president, the cabinet departments,
and the independent agencies).
The teacher had
three goals for the unit. Students would
- Have a better understanding of the complexity of
the federal bureaucracy.
- Realize that the design of bureaucracy puts some
agencies within the reach of partisan politics and some theoretically
outside that reach, although still subject to some political pressure
because they were created by either the president or Congress.
- Be able to identify the various workers’ roles
and the budget involved in each type of agency and, by doing so, come to a
better understanding of where federal taxes go.
In the next unit,
the students were going to study federal taxes.
This parade of
lessons and learning targets led to the larger goals of understanding the
federal bureaucracy and the various agencies’ relationships with politics and
taxes.
One way Mr. Cali
kept the lessons coherent and unified was to continually explain how each
lesson fit into the bigger picture. For example, he pointed out how students’
previous learning about the powers of the president and Congress was part of
the background they needed to understand why different federal agencies were
created, how their learning about the responsibilities of the different agencies
was part of the background they needed to understand the agencies’ funding
requirements, and how their learning about funding requirements would be part
of the background they would need to understand federal taxes in the next unit.
Notice, too, that
some of the daily learning targets called on students’ reasoning skills to put
some of these pieces together themselves. Using learning targets in these ways,
in lesson-sized steps, helped students reach a larger understanding of the
federal bureaucracy.
More Than
Fanfare
Every lesson needs
its own reason to live. One of those reasons is that today’s lesson builds on
the learning from yesterday’s lesson and leads to the learning in tomorrow’s
lesson so that the learning targets form a parade that leads to the achievement
of larger curricular goals and state standards.
Some authors call
those larger goals learning targets, too. We prefer to save the termlearning
target for individual lessons, for two reasons. One, using target for
the lesson-sized learning goals and goals or standards for
the larger learning goals avoids the confusion that comes with calling two
different things by the same name. Two, having a special name for the
lesson-sized learning goal emphasizes the idea that every lesson needs one.
Students should never feel as though they’re simply repeating the same thing
today that they did yesterday.
When the learning
target for today’s lesson builds on yesterday’s learning and leads to
tomorrow’s learning, and when all the learning targets in a sequence of lessons
lead students to achieve a curricular goal or standard, learning will stick.
Brookhart, S., &
Moss, C. (2014, October 1). Learning Targets on Parade. Educational Leadership, 28-33.
Dear Teachers:
Thank you for the work you do
with our children. Thank you for the
high standards to which you hold our students.
Thank you for understanding that educating tomorrow’s leaders is about
so much more than a standardized test score.
Thank you for your commitment to continual professional development, for
exploring innovative teaching practices, for personalizing learning for our
students and for your dedication to our profession, school district and
community. Not only do I want to thank
you for the job you do every day, I want to urge you to thank the teachers who
have impacted your life. Recognize the people who have helped you become the
best version of yourself. 
