This is the sixth of the ‘ten things’ I discussed in my talk at TMClevedon
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Part of the effective feedback loop means that not only do students know what they’re doing well / not so well, but where they are in terms of their learning and how they can take the next step. One of the key parts of this is sharing effective success criteria. It took me longer than I care to admit to get my head around that first bit, but if you get meaningful success criteria then students have a clearer idea about what they need to do, self and peer assessment becomes more effective and teacher marking can be more clearly focussed and therefore have a greater impact.
In fact, success criteria don’t have to come from you. Increasinly I’ve asked students ‘what do think a good one of these will look like’? We’ve discussed ideas – with me pushing back with more questions when necessary (where do children learn that ‘colourful’ is an indication of a good piece of work?!) I type them up as we go, usually with Word open on the projector. Then that list can be printed out and stuck in to books / files at the start of next lesson – their success criteria, ready to be referred to though out the piece of work
POST SCRIPT
It’s funny how fast things move on. If I was doing this now, I might mention the idea of effective feedback / feedforward. It’s had a lot of attention since the Hattie research, and I’d probably point you in the direction of either of these blog posts.