Staff Meeting: Learning Intentions and Success Criteria within the context of the Good Lesson

On Thursday, after school, I attended a staff meeting at the school that I am currently at; it was entitled "Learning Intentions and Success Criteria within the context of the Good Lesson".  The following are notes from that presentation:

5 Components of a Good Lesson:

1. Connect the learning
2. Learning Outcomes and Success Criteria
3. Active Learning
4. Demonstrate Understanding
5. Review and Recall

This pyramid shows how we learn best

Students need to understand the context of their learning, why it is relevant.  (Why it is important to learn and how it is significant).  Students must see how important learning is across the curriculum, and how skills can be applied in a variety of subjects.

The teacher needs to believe in the learning intentions and success criteria.

Often times success criteria can be confused with the learning intentions. 

The learning intentions are the What and the Why?  It is what you want students to know and what they should be able to do as a result of the learning.  It is focused on the learning itself and not on whatever activity is used to support or demonstrate the learning.  It should also be shared right at the beginning of the lesson.  We need to decontextualise so that learning can cross contexts and be made a transferrable skill.  Can use the following template for expressing Learning Intentions:  "We are learning to.... This is because....".  These intentions should be expressed in pupil friendly language, and should be revisited/reiterated throughout the lesson and activity.  Learning intentions should be open-ended, not too specific, for example: write a set of instructions, create a poster, collect and organise data, persuasive writing, etc. 

***I realised that, as a supply teacher, I too need to prepare a laminated template for learning intentions, using the "We are learning to.... This is because...." format, that I can bring with me into classrooms and use for each lesson that I am teaching, as it is important to communicate these ideas with the students at the beginning of each lesson.  I often will say the learning intention during my lesson, but posting it up for students to be able to refer back to throughout the lesson enables them to take some responsibility for their own learning and stay focused.

The success criteria is what is used to assess what has been learned; "steps required to achieve the learning intentions and to what standard" (GOGLASGOW, 2010).  The success criteria must be linked to the learning intentions, and must be specific to the activity.  They should be discussed, understood, and agreed upon by the pupils prior to doing the activity.  Provides a scaffolding and focus for students while engaged in the activity, and as a basis for effective feedback and peer/self-assessment after the activity and lesson.

Semantics and overthinking can complicate success criteria.  You do not want to look for too many success criteria for each  activity and lesson, keep it focused on a limited few. 

***I found this a very good thing to cover, as the line between learning intention and success criteria have always been a little fuzzy for me, and it was handy to do an exercise taking a learning intention and coming up with examples of success criteria, and vice versa.  I have a better sense of how to move from one ot the other, and what the difference is between them.  It was also good for me as I usually am too specific and overthink what I am looking for as success criteria; I am really going to try now not to complicate it and keep it simple and clear.

The plenary is a recap of what has been learned during the lesson and activity, it is meant to summarise the lesson and underline what has been accomplished.  It can be as quick as a one minute activity or last upto 15 minutes.  For the children, it should focus on what was really important learning during the lesson and activity as opposed to what was the most recent point that may have been learned.  For the teacher, the plenary will provide some instant feedback and enables you to be able to make adjustments to forward plans (what areas need more attention and what the students already know and what skills they already possess). 

During the presentation, we were given a handout containing the powerpoint slides as well as a handout containing plenary examples. 

***I was made aware of some very useful resources on the Glasgow Intranet for Glasgow City Employees, now I just need to figure out how to access these resources when I am not at a Glasgow school so I can further familiarise myself with things I have available to me to use in the classrooms and keep up-to-date with things that are happening within the council that may affect me as a supply teacher.