Principal's Message

Learning Intentions and Success Criteria

Welcome back to the final term of the year and a very special welcome to Year 12 who are heading toward the final HSC exams. During Term 1 this year I published to the College community our yearly goals, the one around Learning and Teaching focuses on increasing the literacy skills of students with a focus on writing.

In term three, staff spent professional development time building skills around Learning Intentions and Success Criteria, tools which assist students take more responsibility for their own learning and importantly, develop an understanding of where the ‘gaps’ are in their learning.

Learning Intentions flow from conversations with the students around the big ideas and essential questions and are derived from the curriculum and answer the question, ‘Why are we learning this?’ They work best for the students when they can make sense about the learning in the classroom – it also challenges teachers to select appropriate content.

Success Criteria allow for students and teachers to check in against the essential learnings that will be assessed in the learning intention. Typically, the success criteria will start with I can……. examples include;

I can write a broad statement using observations and experiences.

I can locate, label and find examples of a steam engine and its parts

These success criteria are established at the start of the unit or module and are co constructed by the teacher and the students, in this way the students have an understanding as they progress as to whether they are hitting the criteria and what they need to do in order to experience that success.  

Learning Intentions and Success Criteria should be visible to students at all times so they can reflect not only on the why of the material being delivered but also the how in order to check for understanding and improvement.

Learning Walks and Talks (LWT’s) are a way for staff to visit classrooms (currently Year 7) and ask students picked at random the following questions;

1. What are you learning and why? – this relates directly to the Learning Intention
2. How are you doing? – this engages the students understanding and use of the success criteria

At this early stage of the LWT’s the intent is to promote growth in teacher capacity and student learning outcomes. It is a way for the leadership team to gain feedback around students’ understanding of what they are learning and how they can be successful in their learning. Stay tuned for more on this as the weeks go by.

Stay safe and God bless