Road Map to Success

Success has Sprouted 

The Ontario Ministry of Education document, Growing Success, is a goldmine of information that is extremely valuable to pre-service teachers. It breaks down everything from navigating the curriculum expectations, explaining learning goals and success criteria, the types of evidence of learning, and the difference between formative and summative assessment. All this information is followed by a step by step walk-through of the report card system and what to expect when completing a class set two times a year, in addition to a progress report in the fall. In addition to the walk-through, it also provides a few chapters of strategies for assessing students with special needs, such as IEPs, ESL, or any modification/accommodations. 

What Do You Want?!?

One enduring idea that I gained from reading this document was the importance of developing learning goals and success criteria in student friendly language, and making it transparent consistently throughout the lesson. I don’t remember this being something I was aware of in my elementary schooling. This leads me to believe it might have been given during some assignments, but not explicitly explained as the point of the lesson, and how I could show I understood the concept. Going into my undergrad, and even into this post grad program, I appreciate how frustrating it is when you are given an assignment, but the purpose and criteria are vague. I do not know what direction to start, or how I can make sure I cover what is expected. Often, my work might vary greatly from that of my peers’. Because of this disparity in expectations, I may be disappointed with my final assessment, or feel like my work is worth more than the person who did less than me, but got the same result. This experience is something I will remember in my own teaching when planning any lesson. 

It is important to give students access to the learning goals and success criteria, and stress the importance of referring to the criteria often during the learning process. By doing this, student should develop the habit of checking guidelines as they work, and edit as needed. This will ideally help diminish the disparity between the quality of student’s work, as the habit develops. 

As I said, I will be sure to make the learning goals and success criteria clear for my students in my classroom, but I will also take this approach to my teaching privately. I spoke about my learning experience in vocal lessons growing up, and how the model was mostly assessment as and for learning, with minimal summative assessment. But I did not talk about my experience teaching privately. 

Outside the Classroom

I taught private voice lessons for about 15 students while covering a maternity leave. As a first time teacher with absolutely zero training in how to run a vocal lesson, I was at a loss at how to manage practicing or tracking student growth. I managed to swim with my head just above water, and my students progressed successfully, but it was not without many bumps along the way. If I had known about the strategy of providing clear learning goals and success criteria for a lesson, a span of lessons or even for a specific song or technique, not only would I have had an easier narrowing down a focus for feedback and finding strategies to help my students, but it would also have given students a clear understanding of what they needed to work towards during the lesson, and during their practice time. Students often would say they didn’t know how to practice, even if I gave them something to work on. Perhaps just saying “say these lyrics as a monologue” or “practice this exercise this week”, I should have given them attainable goals, and described how they would be successful in their practicing. I might say “recite these lyrics as a monologue using expression and natural pauses. Make sure you can put accents on certain words, experiment with gestures and facial expressions, play with dynamic changes. You should practice it 3 different ways each time you practice.” Perhaps providing a learning goal and success criteria for each step of learning a song, or what it looks like to correctly practice a technical exercise. Growing up, a similar method might have motivated me to practice singing more, and more efficiently too. I would have gone into a lesson more confident and even if I didn’t practice enough, I would have at least had an idea of what we were going to focus on during my lesson. My students would most likely have benefited the same, and I intend to implement this when I open a private studio in the (hopefully soon) future. 

Being transparent with the purpose of a task and the criteria to be successful gives students the road map to their learning. They are most likely to meet you along the way if the know the path to follow.