#MTBoSBlaugust Designing a plan for student success

"Success Criteria" has been a topic of interest in my district since we moved to our current evaluation model. We have had many conversations about what it is and how we use it. Success criteria is how you know if a student is successful on a learning target. Last year I experimented with giving students a problem, and telling them "You know you've got this when you can successfully complete this problem." I was very surprised that it really motived some of my students. I did this in Geometry and I chose problems that were pretty challenging and required a solid understanding of the skills. This was not the place for open-ended problems, rather it was a clean way for students to know if they were understanding the basic skills.

Fast forward to this summer, and I have decided to create a success criteria page for each chapter. I have designed the chapter 1 divider for student notebooks (I have remodeled this thing 5 times within the last week, so I will probably change it again.) I included the chapter vocabulary and learning objectives.

Chapter 1 Divider

From there I began working on my success criteria handout. I chose problems that if a student has mastered the skill, they will be able to complete. I started by writing out the learning targets for the first chapter, and from there I compiled a list of problems that represented those learning targets. Their assessment will have two parts. Students will be given a skills-based assessment that is similar to their success criteria page. The students will then have a non-traditional assessment that will cover the skills on the success criteria but will be higher level thinking. These will be problem-solving tasks. Each student will have their own set of problems but they will be able to discuss them within their groups. Students will be asked to create problems, show mastery, and complete non-Googleable tasks. The goal of the success criteria is to show students what they are working toward. It gives them a concrete example to use as their tests for success. I will be writing these on the board on the days that we are covering them, and showing them to students. I believe that this is more relateable to students than a learning objective can be - it provides students with a visual of the learning target and makes it attainable to them.

I also saw this tweet from Brittny Schjolin which led me to Laura Wheeler's Course Packs. I created one for Chapter 1 of my class. She did hers by topic/standard. This year I'm going to let my book guide my progression (though I use activities from many many other places, and I may update this for next year to be a more whole year overview). I haven't decided how I'm going to use it yet. She uses it as a place to record their learning after doing VNPS (Vertical Non-Permanent Surfaces). I also use VNPS in my classroom - though not as effectively as Laura.

Algebra 1 Chapter Dividers - Only Chapter 1 is currently done, but this is a Google Doc and will update as I work through the rest of my chapters. (The joys of teaching a course for the first time)

Algebra 1 Chapter 1 Success Criteria

Algebra 1 Course Pack (only Ch1 is done)