Effective Success Criteria Can Transform Learning (and Teaching!)

Here's how (and why) to make the shift from task based to skill based criteria

Jun 02, 2022

In education, we have all heard of success criteria. Success criteria are, ‘Standards or specific descriptions of successful attainment of learning goals developed by teachers on the basis of criteria in the achievement chart, and discussed and agreed upon in collaboration with students, that are used to determine to what degree a learning goal has been achieved. Criteria describe what success “looks like”, and allow the teacher and student to gather information about the quality of student learning.’ (Growing Success, 2010. p. 155)

Hmmmm.

It has taken a long time and required the guidance of my mentor to unpack what this means, deeply understand its intent and implement it in practice. You see, when understood, success criteria is at the heart of all learning and should be the heartbeat of our assessment for, as and of learning.

I did not understand success critieria before; even though I thought I did and was regularly using it (sort of, not really) with my students.

Here is what the success criteria for an expository paragraph may have looked like.

Doing what I thought was best, I presented this criteria to the students at the beginning of starting a new unit or whatever new learning we were doing. I used it again in some form of rubric when I evaluated their work at the end. In between, I might have planned lessons around each of the success criteria, given students time to practice/work on the task or assignment, and then marked it. But this is not learning. And that success criteria in the first image, that isn’t even what success criteria is meant to be. That success criteria looks more like a task checklist. You either did it, or you didn’t, and it isn’t skill or curriculum based. We also like to quantify success criteria.

For example, we might if a student gives 3-5 specific details they get a better mark than a student who gives 2-3 specific details. But what if the student provides 5 irrelevant details? The success criteria must be qualitative and teachable in order to be helpful to the student.

Here is what my success criteria for the same assignment looks like now and outlined below are the steps you can take to get you started in creating and using effective success criteria.

Side note: While it would be great to start fresh, and plan using the concepts in backward design, it is unrealistic to think we are going to scrap everything and start over. Instead, ask yourself this, Why am I teaching/asking kids to…

Write a poem
Conduct a lab
Write an essay for my history class
Answer novel study questions
Do a science project

I didn’t have a good answer for some questions I had to ask myself. Why was I teaching students how to write a poem and then marking it? They might never have to write a poem again. Those tasks still have a place but they should be in service to a skill. We should be leading with teaching skills, not the tasks. The task is simply one way to learn the skill.

Look at all of your tasks and projects, compare them to the curriculum and find what skills they are supporting, then lead with this. I shouldn’t have been telling students we were learning to write poetry. I should have said we are working on describing, word choice and drafting and revising. These are skills in the curriculum and they are transferable amongst all subjects.

Here we go. The best I can explain on paper. If you are a paid subscriber, I will personally help you develop effective success criteria for one of your assignments.

Step 1: Identify the skill in your overall learning goal or period of instruction learning goal.

Step 2: Develop the success criteria for the skill

Now that we have identified summarize as the skill (and the thing we need to teach) we need to develop the success criteria for what it means to summarize effectively. To develop success criteria you can draw on the curriculum, your professional knowledge and research (Google it!).

At this point, it is very helpful to actually try the skill. Give yourself the prompt or work you would give the students. Ask yourself, what do I expect from a summary? And remember it must be curriculum and skill based, not a task checklist or recipe to follow.

By going through this process, I came up with the following success criteria. And now that I have it, it never has to change…unless I realize I didn’t get it quite right of course. And the success criteria for summarzie should be true for all subject and all grades.

Now you can go back to your planning doc and start to construct some of the success criteria for the skills you have identified. Constructing success criteria is the most time consuming and challenging part of this whole process. That said, build your success criteria over time. Also, it’s more fun with friends or colleagues. And I am here for you! Contact me and I will help you. Don’t forget, I’ve already provided the success criteria for generating ideas, explain and now summarize.

Creating success criteria is the first step to effective and equitable assessment practices. It is essential. Questions? Just ask.

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Bye for now!
Lori

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