Co-creating Success Criteria with Students

There has been research published in recent years that shows that students learn better when they know what they're supposed to be learning, and have a clear understanding of what successful demonstration of learning looks like: knowing the learning target and the success criteria. School leaders, including in my district, have started requiring all teachers to post written learning targets and success criteria, but I'm sure I'm not the only one who didn't get clear guidance on how to do it effectively, especially in the elementary music classroom. I shared some general things I've learned about how to share learning targets effectively in this previous post, and today I want to focus more closely on one of those points: co-creating success criteria with students.

First a little background knowledge: learning intentions (or "learning targets" as many have come to refer to them) are the "this is what we're learning about today"s. The success criteria are the "this is how we'll know / show we've learned what we were supposed to learn"s. Whether you are being asked to explicitly state and/or write them for every lesson, if you have a solid understanding of your curriculum then you probably could pretty easily identify what the learning intention and success criteria are for any given lesson. For example, today my second graders are learning about the 4 orchestral instrument families, and when they can accurately name the 4 families when they see pictures of each group of instruments, and describe the characteristics of each family, they will have learned what they were supposed to learn in that lesson.

One of the key points that I learned from my deep dive into educational research on the topic of learning intentions (particularly from this book) is the importance of developing success criteria together with your students. When I was first reading about this idea my reaction was, "they want me to do WHAT?" (insert eye roll here). It sounded cumbersome, time-consuming, and not realistic for actual classroom teaching, particularly elementary school and especially music. But the more I read and started to wrap my head around what they were saying, the more I realized I was actually already doing this a lot- sometimes verbally and sometimes written- and had been for years. 

All we're saying is that, instead of pre-writing success criteria up on the board and telling students what they should do by the end of the lesson, we review prior learning and guide students to be able to describe a concept or how to do a task correctly together through discussion as a way to check for understanding and serve as another way for students to grasp the concept further. So I put dry erase frames to write my learning intentions with success criteria the district-mandated way at the front of the room but down low, where it was out of the way but still visible:

Then I added a whiteboard I already had on-hand to the wall in a more prominent spot right by where I teach, more at eye-level for the students, to write the *actual* success criteria/ lesson intention as we go throughout the lesson (I figure if I decide to stick with this formula, which I think I will, then I'll order something bigger to keep in the front of the room for this purpose- this is a little small obviously but it does the job for now):

The lightbulb moment for me was when I was doing a 5th grade composition lesson. At the beginning of class I explained the composition task: writing a 2-measure minor melody in 4/4 time on the treble clef staff. Then I asked students to point out what they needed to remember in order to write a good melody. They recalled using la as the starting and ending note, pointed out the pitch bank they had on the sheet that showed which pitches they should use in their melody, and said they needed 4 beats in each measure. As we discussed, I wrote each item on the whiteboard. Ta-da! We co-created our success criteria, and now they were ready to do their composition and understood what to do! At the end of the assignment I referred back to our list and they checked their work to make sure they had done everything successfully before turning it in. 

Once I saw how this process could work seamlessly with the way I already teach (while taking it a step further in being more conscious about pointing out the success criteria and writing it for students to see), it became much easier to see how this could work with other elementary music lessons. Another example would be a lesson where I'm introducing 2nd graders to half notes for the first time. At the beginning of the lesson I told them they were going to learn a new rhythm today, and by the end of the lesson they should be able to tell me what it is and show me how to clap and say it. I just wrote "new note" on the board and left the rest blank. Once they learned the song that had half notes in it, instead of me having to tell them to listen for a new rhythm they didn't know yet, they immediately told me they knew what the mystery note was: it was those long notes! I showed them what a half note looked like, they figured out it was 2 beats by clapping the rhythm of the song while walking on the beat, and then I asked them what I should write on the board for the new note and they were able to tell me easily. Telling them at the beginning that they were learning a new note, and writing that on the board, had their brains looking for an unfamiliar rhythm from the beginning and they grasped the concept faster.

If you are in a school or district that is asking teachers to share success criteria with students, I hope this helps give you some more concrete direction on how to do so effectively in an elementary music setting. And if you aren't being asked to share success criteria, I hope you'll consider implementing this strategy in some lessons when it makes sense and see how it goes- I think you will notice a difference! Another key, related point worth mentioning is that not every lesson should have success criteria. If you have the freedom to do so, only use this when it makes sense- don't feel compelled to do it every time.

What questions do you have about success criteria in elementary music? What strategies have you been using in your classroom? I'd love to hear your thoughts and questions in the comments.