Reaching Success

Success criteria is another topic I´ve been trying hard to improve as it is my flow. I´ve spent my whole last year trying to work it out withour any "success". I´ve found this on the web:

The learning intention of a lesson  tells students what they should know, understand and be able to do, and the success criteria help teachers to decide whether their students have achieved the learning intention. Sts will asnwer the following question;

• How will I know whether I've achieved the learning intention?

So far, I´ve discovered that most of my "criteria" have been described wrongly since they couldn´t show what sts have achieved the goal! Sometimes it was out of subject, some other times it was unattainable, and on some occations it was too easy to achieve! Thus, I´ve started paying more attention to the criteria I develop for a learning intention. I´ve made some improvements and I´ve used some which could easily show sts how well they´ve worked in the class. But I still find some mistakes in the rubrics chosen for certain activities. I imagine that it has to do with practice. I won´t give up, they say that PRACTICE makes PERFECT.

Goal-Setting

My first entry will be devoted to the topic of objectives. Human beings constantly set objectives for themselves in an attempt to improve their living conditions. Once I heard someone say that human beings live their lives setting objective after objective, without goals life worths nothing. He was neither a philosopher nor an erudite; he was just a Cuban taxi driver. At that moment I jot down his ideas since I wanted to remember them for the rest of my life. I´ve found myself quoting him again and again, especially now that school year has started! We, teachers, tend to set our goals for the year, for the term, for the project, for the day, even for ourselves in relation to the group we have. Without them our teaching leads us nowhere or somewhere else we might not plan to go. And if we don´t share them with our students it might produce the same results. To be sincere, I didn´t use to share them with kids and now I see how mistaken I was! Knowing what we want helps us get it! It´s not customary to get on a train or bus without knowing where we want to go, we don´t take a plane without having decided on the place to go and we won´t reach our destination just by accident. We generally make decisions beforehand on the route we want to follow and the resources we need to get. The same happens at school! This first week has been a proof that setting goals out loud for students to know where we are going increases performance. Especially if the word GOAL is used with the kids instead of "learning intentions"! Some of the kids called themselves Messi since they felt they scored a goal at the end of the class!

Welcome!

"An empowered teacher is a reflective decision maker who finds joy in learning
and in investigating the teaching/learning process—one who views learning
as construction and teaching as a facilitating process to enhance and enrich
development."
—Fosnot (1989, p. xi)