Provost Effectively Utilizing Learning Targets

Provost Elementary teacher Haley Holland captured the attention of her 4th graders today by using a learning target to help them find the main purpose of a story.

Learning targets are short statements that describe exactly what the students are supposed to learn by the end of a lesson or assignment. They provide students the ability to guide their own learning through achieving specific success criteria (specific ways to achieve the learning target) and then demonstrating their understanding. Through using learning targets, students are able to look at their own work and measure their ability to understand concepts.

Miss Holland began by having students repeat the overall learning target out-loud, brainstorming ways to achieve the target and stating how they can demonstrate that they have mastered the target. She then split students into groups of four and gave each group a computer. Students were instructed to read a story and write one sentence identifying the main purpose of the story

Motivated and engaged students were guided by specific success criteria and successfully showcased the success that comes from utilizing learning targets in the classroom.