You gotta feel the love for Learning Targets..

Our love affair with learning targets has been going on for more than 3 years at Waukesha North High School, but now is a good time to check yourself. Are you really using learning targets to help students aim for understanding?

The book, Learning Targets, by Moss and Brookhart was a good reminder of just how important it is to establish a learning target theory of action in our schools. There is no dispute that the most effective teaching and the most meaningful student learning happen when teachers design the right learning target for today's lesson and use it along with their students to aim for and assess understanding.

Do you post a learning target to be compliant? Or do you truly believe in the power of your learning targets to guide learning and help raise student achievement?

Sharing learning targets with students means more than simply writing the target on the board or stating the target at the beginning of the lesson. It must be embedded throughout the lesson. Students need the learning targets so they know what they are supposed to learn, a performance of understanding that makes that target visible, and clear criteria for success so they can assess their progress in reaching the desired targets.

Every step of instruction and formative assessment should be grounded in a learning target.

If learning targets haven't become the lifeline and the centerpiece of everything your students are learning, receiving feedback on, and showing they know it through their assessment performances...than you better figure out, how to become re-connected to your learning targets.
You gotta feel the love for learning targets, our students successful future depends on it!