I know I'm not the only elementary school teacher who is now required to post written learning targets for every lesson, including for early childhood and Kindergarten students who can hardly read. This year I came up with a strategy to make my learning target visual something that my youngest students would actually benefit from, using pictures to illustrate the words, and it was a great success! Not only did it check the box for my district policies but it actually did help my students and was surprisingly easy for me to manage as a teacher as well.
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I've said this before but first a word about language. When my district administration announced the requirement for all teachers to post "learning targets" I started doing a lot of research on where this initiative was coming from, and it's clear to me that all of the educational researchers who have promoted this practice use the term learning intention, not learning target or lesson objective. So although I have included the other more commonly used terms in the introduction and title so everyone knows what I'm talking about, I use "learning intention" when I speak and will be using that term in the rest of this article. They refer to the same idea but I think the word "intention" does a better job of communicating what we're trying to do.
My Setup
There are 3 basic supplies I used to set up my learning intention display for my Kindergarten and self-contained classes:
-cards with clipart representing the skills, concepts, and vocabulary from my curriculum
-boards with sentence starters on which to put the cards
-moveable adhesive to attach the cards to the boards and switch them out for each lesson
I made sure the display was at relative eye level for the students and as close as possible to where I teach from the majority of the time. In my case I had a small area on the wall I wanted to use, so I laminated the cards and printed and laminated the sentence starters out on regular copy paper, then put this Tack-It Over & Over glue on the back of the cards so I can attach the laminated cards to the laminated backgrounds and change them out. If you haven't heard of this removeable glue stuff it is a game changer and you should check it out! But obviously you could do the same thing with velcro dots or something similar (although if you do that you'll need to have set spots where the cards can go), and if you have a magnetic surface like a whiteboard or metal door you could use magnets as well.
Illustrated Concepts
Illustrating the actual concepts I teach in my Kindergarten music classes- not the activities- ended up being more complex than I initially thought. There are plenty of teachers out there using visual schedules/ agendas that have pictures showing common music class activities, but not concepts. I was fortunate to get the super talented Jane from SillyODesign, who already had graphics to match a lot of the instruments and activities for early childhood music, to design the illustrations, and she went above and beyond in creating representations of the concepts from my curriculum that are not only clear but also highly relatable, with emoji-style faces, farm animals, and children representing a broad range of identities.
I took those images and added the words as well so that students get used to seeing and reading the words at the same time but can clearly understand the concepts at first glance. You can grab the cards I made (with labeled and unlabeled versions) here if you want to use them too!
If you wanted to do the same thing digitally you could also use the cards I made, or get the clipart from Jane's TPT store here so you can set them up in your slides however you like.
In-Class Use
The way I actually reference and use them in class varies significantly depending on the lesson. For Kindergarten I start every lesson with a welcome song and often jump straight into the first activity with no explanation so I definitely do not have any type of long conversation where I'm "reading" or explaining the learning intention to the students at the beginning of class. I use the visuals to reinforce what I'm saying when the concept comes up in my teaching. So if the goal is to learn loud and quiet, any time I say the words loud and quiet I'll point to the pictures. If, after learning a concept initially, we're doing an activity where students are practicing something and/or I'm informally assessing their understanding, I'll use the visuals to review their prior learning before we start.
When I'm on my game, I do find it very helpful to go over the learning intention and reference the display at the end of class to review what they learned, practice any vocabulary, and check for understanding. Admittedly that didn't always happen if I ran out of time or it felt like their attention spans couldn't handle it that day, but it was very helpful when I did.
Benefits
Using this visual display definitely fulfilled the purpose I originally set out to fill, but it also had many other benefits that I did not anticipate. In terms of communicating the learning intention and success criteria to non-readers (or early readers or language learners), it was definitely the best solution I have ever come across. I find that, for students who can't read easily, adding words to the wall just adds to the visual clutter. Not only is a written learning intention not helpful for those students but I find it to in fact be harmful because it is distracting and intimidating and sucks all the joy out of the playful learning environment I maintain. Having these illustrations made the visuals easy for everyone to "read" regardless of their language ability, and kept it fun and relatable with the playful illustrations.
Beyond that though, I found that having the visual reminder was very helpful for keeping students focused on the concepts we were working on, and made the learning accessible for many students beyond just early readers. Pointing out the concepts throughout the lesson redirected students' focus and improved their understanding of the focus concepts, and reviewing the learning intention and success criteria at the end of the lesson significantly improved their retention (which we all know is a major challenge in music class which generally doesn't meet every day). Students knew what the purpose of activities were- they could still be fully immersed in the fun but their brains were more attentive to the specific concepts we were practicing.
These benefits applied not just to early readers but also to new students who joined the school throughout the year from non-English backgrounds. Even more than the early readers, language learners were able to catch on to the concepts- not just following along with the activity but actually learning the musical concepts- without needing to understand my verbal explanations and directions. This was a HUGE benefit that I did not anticipate!
I also realized these are perfect for nonverbal students. I could take them off the wall and have students point to the picture that matches what we're doing, or to select a musical element to participate in creating / composing, without speaking. It is a quick way to basically serve the function of an assistive communication device without having to pre-program words and concepts into their device.
As much as I hated being forced to post written "learning targets" for students who can't read, I am thrilled with the results I have ended up with in the process of figuring out how to make this work for students. I HIGHLY recommend trying this in your classes, even if you aren't required to post lesson objectives / learning targets / learning intentions - I have seen the benefits to student learning and I am a believer! If you want to get all the materials I used to set up my display, here are all the visuals including the cards and several versions of the backgrounds. If you have any questions please leave them in the comments below, I'd love to chat about this further! And if you want to read about how I have implemented learning intentions with my older students to make it beneficial for them without eliciting too many eye rolls, here's my post on learning targets in the music room.
