Learning Goals and Success Criteria

You may notice pictures of your child on the floor or carpet doing math on a big chart paper. They are usually working  with a partner and working on an open ended math question. This is the start of one of our 3 part math lessons. We give students time to work collaboratively on a problem that we will later use to develop a set of specific success criteria. The success criteria are strategies we develop with the students to help them solve similar problems in the future. We are basically developing and highlighting successful strategies to solve math problems. The first picture is an example of the math problem that they worked on. What you are seeing is how a particular group solved the problem. We then take some examples from the work that they have completed and we use their own strategies to build a chart that they can use in the future to help them. Students go up as a group and explain their thinking and the strategies they used to solve the problem. We are also sure to include the reason we are doing this problem--the learning goal! Kids need to know why they are doing something. It's not because the teacher tells them to. We are doing this to learn a specific mathematical skill or strategy. The whole idea is that the students now have a resource to use in the classroom that will be there to support them during math class. These success criteria charts stay up throughout the unit and they are encouraged to use them during class quizzes or tests. If you have any questions please feel free to contact me at the school, or just add a comment right to this blog post.