One of the most rewarding things to witness as a teacher is the ability of students to articulate what they are learning, how they might demonstrate it, and why they are learning it. In ‘teacher speak’, these are often conceptualised as ‘learning intentions’ or ‘lesson/learning objectives’ and ‘success criteria’.
I’ve struggled with these terms at times, not because I have trouble understanding the underlying concept or intent (pardon the pun), but because I feel that structuring lessons in this way is unnatural, robotic, disengaging and somewhat patronising.
You may call me weird, but when I’m trying to learn something with the assistance of a more knowledgable other, I’m not (or don’t think I’d be) really that comfortable with them reiterating to me what I’m supposed to be learning and how I’m supposed to be demonstrating it. It just seems kind of odd.
At another level, how can both learners (teacher and student) be sure that the student has truly mastered the content and skills focussed on during the lesson? Of course, this involves consideration of the learning intentions and success criteria of the learning experience, but I would argue, more deeply, that it involves the six elements of the Quality Teaching Framework tabled under the dimension of Quality Learning Environment, and perhaps more specifically ‘Explicit Quality Criteria’.
In some way, what I’ve just written seems contradictory; on one hand I’ve said that I’m not a fan of learning intentions and success criteria, and on the other I’ve suggested the need for a quality learning environment and explicit quality criteria. I don’t want to go full treatise here, but I think it’s worth unpacking.
Firstly, I’m not against learning intentions and success criteria. As mentioned above, I just think they can be communicated in a somewhat robotic/unnatural fashion. I think I’m pretty clear on that point. Rather than go through the second dimension of the QTF, element by element here, I think it would be more beneficial to reflect on a recent classroom experience of mine and see how they relate; with Minecraft, of course.
Today I conducted a maths lesson on square and triangular numbers
We ran through what constitutes a square number and how they’re calculated.
We did the same with triangular numbers.
We discussed and analysed how square and triangular numbers are related, jointly constructing arrays and diagrams on one of the room’s whiteboards.
We jointly constructed the first five square and triangular numbers.
Students were then asked to construct arrays and diagrams of the first six square and triangular numbers in their workbooks.
I opened up a class Minecraft server, and when students came to me (one by one, or many by many) with their workbooks to show me that they were able to represent these numbers in their workbooks, they were then required to build a digital representation of these number sets ‘in game’.
Students were very keen to complete their bookwork and demonstrate their learning in order to gain access to the class server, and this allowed for very quick formative assessment of student understanding, as well as how well the, here goes, learning objectives and success criteria had been achieved.
It was immediately apparent how well, or otherwise, students had understood both the task at hand as well as the content and skills required. I didn’t really need to explicitly state the learning intentions and success criteria; we did, however, engage in deep discussion of our learning. Student by student, group by group, problems were identified and resolved. Tomorrow we’ll reiterate the process, continue the learning, and form a greater understanding of math. We’ll discuss what it means to be a successful learner, just not in robotic terms.
In my opinion, every teacher should be familiar with the Quality Teaching Framework. If you’re not, you can familiarise yourself here:
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