Scribd
Upload
590 views2 pages

Chapter 5 Reflection

1. Teachers should establish clear learning targets for lessons to improve student understanding and focus assessment by communicating to students what is expected of them and what success looks like. 2. Learning targets should build upon previous lessons and connect to future lessons to advance student understanding of important concepts and skills based on curriculum standards and the learning trajectory. 3. Teachers share the learning target with students through explanation, demonstration, and engaging students in activities to develop understanding and provide evidence of progress toward meeting the target.

Uploaded by

Herbert Ibo
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
590 views2 pages

Chapter 5 Reflection

1. Teachers should establish clear learning targets for lessons to improve student understanding and focus assessment by communicating to students what is expected of them and what success looks like. 2. Learning targets should build upon previous lessons and connect to future lessons to advance student understanding of important concepts and skills based on curriculum standards and the learning trajectory. 3. Teachers share the learning target with students through explanation, demonstration, and engaging students in activities to develop understanding and provide evidence of progress toward meeting the target.

Uploaded by

Herbert Ibo
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 2

Establishing Learning Target

Many teachers use learning targets as a way to improve student

understanding of the purpose of a lesson or unit of study and to focus

assessment. As with any teaching practice, the details of how you use the

strategy make a huge difference. For students to learn they need to know what is

expected of them and they need to know what success looks like. Therefore,

teachers must create and effectively communicate clearly defined learning

targets.

Teachers design the “right” learning target for today’s lesson when they

consider where the lesson resides in a larger learning trajectory and identify the

next steps students must take to move toward the overarching under‑ standings

described in standards and unit goals. Individual lessons should amount to

something. The right learning target for today’s lesson builds on the learning

targets from previous lessons in the unit and connects with learning targets in

future lessons to advance student understanding of important concepts and

skills. That’s why we consider important curricular standards and the potential

learning trajectory as we define the learning target for today’s lesson. Our goal is

to help our students master a coherent series of learning challenges that will

ultimately lead to those standards. Teachers share the target with their students

by telling, showing, and most important engaging students in a performance of

understanding, an activity that simultaneously shows students what the target is,

develops their understanding of the concepts and skills that make up the target,
and produces evidence of their progress toward the target. Together, teachers

and students use that evidence to make decisions about further learning.

A learning target is not an instructional objective. Learning targets differ

from instructional objectives in both design and purpose. As the name implies,

instructional objectives guide instruction, and we write them from the teacher’s

point of view. Their purpose is to unify outcomes across a series of related

lessons or an entire unit. By design, instructional objectives are too broad to

guide what happens in today’s lesson. A Learning Target is a statement of

intended learning for students based on the standards. A Learning Target

specifies and unpacks the objective and spells out what students will be able to

do during and after the lesson or lesson series. Learning Targets are in student

friendly language and are specific to the lesson for the day, or span of days, and

directly connected to assessment. A learning target also includes performance

criteria or a demonstration of learning.

Finally, learning targets provide a common focus for the decisions that

schools make about what works, what doesn’t work, and what could work better.

They help educators set challenging goals for what expert teachers and

principals should know and be able to do. Learning targets guide teachers on

what they are to teach and students on what they are to learn. Most important,

teachers use learning targets to determine what behavior they should be looking

for as students demonstrate their level of knowledge and skill. Therefore,

teachers need to write learning targets in clear and measurable ways.

You might also like