Success criteria

Leader’s agenda

1. Start

   1Introduction

   5 min

   1. a.
      Make sure observation partners are sitting next to each other.
   2. b.
      Hand out the agenda.
   3. c.
      Share the learning intentions of this workshop. We are learning to:

      • share successes and failures, and support each other
      • use success criteria well
2. +5′

   2Starter activity

   5 min

   1. a.
      Clear the air before the work starts. Each teacher has a maximum of 30 seconds to name one thing that made teaching hard this month, and one small thing that helped. No one can ‘pass’, and no one offers solutions yet.
   2. b.
      Use the stopwatch to keep time, and choose respondents at random (e.g. name cards). Everyone must be involved in this activity.
   3. c.
      When it is not their turn, the teachers’ role is active listening.
3. +10′

   3Feedback

   25 min

   1. a.
      Ask everyone to open their personal action plan. Explain that each teacher sends you a copy of their plan (“Copy my plan”, on their device) so you have a record of what they said they would do between sessions and can follow up next session.
   2. b.
      Ask each teacher to write about a technique they have tried since the last workshop and complete the first section of the plan (two minutes). It helps to have their personal action plan from the last meeting to hand.
   3. c.
      Choose someone to be the challenger and give them the role of the challenger sheet. Choose a different person from last time, but make sure it is someone who will challenge others. During the feedback, the challenger’s role is to challenge the feedback each teacher brings, getting everyone to think about formative assessment with questions like:

      • What’s formative about that?
      • What did you do with the information you collected?
      • How did this alter your teaching?
      • How did this benefit student learning?
   4. d.
      Give each person two minutes to share with the group, choosing teachers to feed back at random (e.g. name cards). As each teacher feeds back, the others actively listen, then discuss the points raised if there is time. Everyone must be involved in this activity.
4. +35′

   4Success criteria

   20 min

   1. a.
      Explain that success criteria are a selection of the most important things that students need to demonstrate to show they have achieved the learning intention. (In this workshop we are focusing on process success criteria. There are also product success criteria – what students should have learned by the end of the lesson – but these are less useful and we are not dealing with them in this workshop.)
   2. b.
      Distribute handout 2.2.1 (Learning intentions and success criteria – what is the difference?). Give time for everyone to read it individually and check that it makes sense to everyone (five minutes).
   3. c.
      Distribute handout 2.2.2 (Ways of using success criteria). Teachers read it individually, then discuss it in threes (ten minutes).
   4. d.
      Ask one person in each group to feed back one way of using success criteria that one of the others in their small group might use (five minutes).
5. +55′

   5Personal action planning

   15 min

   1. a.
      Using their personal action plan, each teacher chooses one or two techniques they are going to use before the next workshop, and what they will do less of (teachers will need pushing on this).
   2. b.
      Pair-share: each teacher spends two minutes sharing their plan with their partner, then they swap.
   3. c.
      Give out the peer lesson observation sheet for the teacher and the observer to use. Both keep a copy as evidence for performance management – there will be no centrally held copies. The teacher being observed fills in their sections first; the observer then completes the observation and question sections during the lesson. Afterwards they discuss the feedback and each completes their agreed sections.
   4. d.
      If necessary, explain the peer lesson observation sheet with an example like this:

      • The focus is the technique I plan to use in the lesson, and I can ask my observer to collect up to three types of evidence. For example, if I am trying to ensure that I involve all students, I may want the observer to mark each time I talk with a student about learning or behaviour during the lesson (a seating plan could be used for this), and whether I consistently use an all-student response system.
   5. e.
      Ask pairs to arrange when the peer observations will take place (they can be for a whole lesson, or just 20 minutes at the start, middle or end of a lesson). Hopefully most teachers will already have peer observed one part of a lesson and in turn been peer observed once.
   6. f.
      Choose two or three teachers at random (e.g. name cards) to share with the group what their partner is planning.
   7. g.
      Explain that some students are meeting this week and know that some teachers will be working on success criteria over the next month. Some of these students will come to the start of the next workshop and feed back to the group on how having explicit success criteria has affected their learning.

   Your school’s technique menu: choose one or two

   Teachers tick theirs in their own action plan, on their device, and copy it to you before they leave.

   • Strengths and weaknesses discussion
   • Model papers
   • Choose-swap-choose
   • WALT, WILF, TIB

   What each technique looks like in class
6. +70′

   6Summary of learning

   5 min

   1. a.
      Distribute handout 2.2.3 (My favourite formative assessment technique – sharing good practice).
   2. b.
      Ask everyone to complete the sheet and hand it in to you so that we can all share our best formative assessment practice (five minutes). Some teachers may want a second sheet to describe another technique that works well for them.
   3. c.
      Pass the sheets to the administrator, who will collate them for the next workshop.