Set learning goals that provide achievable challenges for students of varying abilities and characteristics.

Standard 3.1

There is compelling evidence for the importance of goals in enhancing performance. Students learn best when they have an understanding of where they are at, where they are going, what it will look like when they are there, and where they will go to next.

Locke and Latham, 1990

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Assessment for learning

Assessment for learning improves student learning and helps students become independent, self‐monitoring learners (Black & Wiliam, 1998; Clarke, 2008). Teachers play an essential role in supporting students to develop these skills by:

• ensuring that students have a clear understanding of what they are learning and what successful learning looks like;
• modelling descriptive feedback, self-assessment, and goal setting; and
• providing opportunities to practice these skills, first with guidance and support and then independently.

Set appropriate learning goals

• Identify knowledge and skills from the curriculum expectations
• Learning goals must be incremental and scaffolded
• Expressed in language meaningful to students
• Goals need to be specific and observable
• Stated from the student's perspective

• Share and clarify the learning goals
• Provide students with an organizer they can use to record their ideas about the learning goal as the learning evolves (e.g., What are you learning today? Which activity(ies) helped you most in learning? How does what you are learning connect with what you already know and can do?)
• Use success criteria (e.g., rubrics)
  

• Help students understand the criteria
• Set individual learning goals
• Provide opportunities for self- and peer-assessment
• Provide descriptive feedback

Teach goal setting skills

Goals must be specific, represent short term outcomes and considered difficult to achieve. When teaching:

• Provide prompts and scaffolds to estimate effort, resources, and difficulty.
• Provide models or examples of the process and product of goal-setting.
• Provide guides and checklists for scaffolding goal-setting.
• Post goals, objectives, and schedules in an obvious place.

Co-construct learning goals

Use a four step process developed by Gregory, Cameron and Davies (1997). Firstly, give students two exemplars and ask what was done well and what needs improvement. Discuss which one is best and why.

• Brainstorm
• Sort and categorise
• Make and post a t-chart
• Add, revise, refine

Support strategy and planning development

Once a goal is set, effective learners and problem-solvers plan a strategy, including the tools they will use, for reaching that goal. To help learners become more plannful and strategic, a variety of options are needed, such as cognitive “speed bumps” that prompt them to “stop and think;” graduated scaffolds that help them actually implement strategies; or engagement in decision-making with competent mentors. When teaching:

• Embed prompts and time to “stop and think” before acting.
  
• Embed prompts to “show and explain your work” (e.g., portfolio review).
• Provide checklists and project planning templates for understanding the problem, setting up prioritization, sequences, and schedules of steps.
• Model think-alouds of the process.
• Provide guides for breaking long-term goals into reachable short-term objectives.

Enhance student capacity for monitoring progress

Learners need a clear picture of the progress that they are (or are not) making. It is important to ensure that options can be customized to provide feedback that is more explicit, timely, informative, and accessible. Especially important is providing “formative” feedback that allows learners to monitor their own progress effectively and to use that information to guide their own effort and practice. When teaching:

• Ask questions to guide self-monitoring and reflection.
• Show representations of progress (e.g., before and after photos, graphs and charts showing progress over time, process portfolios).
• Prompt learners to identify the type of feedback or advice that they are seeking.
• Use templates that guide self-reflection on quality and completeness.
• Provide differentiated models of self-assessment strategies (e.g., role-playing, video reviews, peer feedback).
• Use of assessment checklists, scoring rubrics, and multiple examples of annotated student work/performance examples.

Source: Adapted from CAST (2011). Universal Design for Learning Guidelines version 2.0. Wakefield, MA: Author.


Examples of effective learning goals

• We are learning to use clues in the text to know what the author is saying without writing it in words.
• I can explain what a quadrilateral is. I can identify several geometric properties related to quadrilaterals. I can use geometric properties to describe how quadrilaterals are the same and different. I can sort and group quadrilaterals using different geometric properties.
• We are learning to make healthier personal food choices by using information on food lables.
• We are learning to rework a piece using feedback from our teacher and classmates.
• I will be able to use descriptive words, phrasees, and expressions to clearly describe a scene or situation.