What is the Purpose of Success Criteria?

Earlier this year, Ross (of Teacher Toolkit fame) ran a twilight session at UCL. It was entitled 'Effective Classroom Differentiation with @TeacherToolkit'. It was on Wednesday 7th March, but we were unable to attend, but as we subscribe to UCL's PLN, we were sent a copy of the slides used by Ross in his presentation.

Much of what Ross had presented looked useful, but we were particularly impressed by his piece on Success Criteria. It really struck a chord with us. 

Here's the basics of it (and it really is simple): Get the children to design, draw, make, write something with only basic instruction. Get them to mark this against success criteria that they only see after they have finished. Then, repeat this, but with the success criteria shown in advance. Then, discuss which was more successful and why...

We've put together some examples here (Currently as .notebook & .pdf)

NB: unrelated to any of the above, but from the same presentation we also picked up the following;
- www.teachertoolkit.co.uk/2016/02/19/ssat 
- Refer to No Hand Up Policy as 'Cold Calling'
- www.teachertoolkit.co.uk/2015/03/28/the-question-matrix/

Proud of Your Work?

Lee recently published his 'Taking Teaching Back Episode 1 - Book Scrutinies' video. While watching it, one of his points really struck a chord with me.

The above image is from 5:14 in the video. I've seen this online many times and thought it a good idea, but never got round to it. Lee's point is about the extra work this places on the teacher. His solution is something along these lines...

This is a poster we've now placed in our classrooms. We used 'iPad' as those are the devices we have and used 'Google Drive' as every child has access. You can adapt it for the devices your school has and whatever cloud the children have access to.

So, 'Request a Selfie' nice but no thanks. Take your own photo, put it in your own cloud and show the adults at home: yes please.

Any similar ideas, please let us know. And, check out Lee on YouTube (Or Facebook - he's Facebook royalty!)

Live Working Walls

Last week, Colin replied to one of our posts about using Padlet:

@PrimaryIdeas @padlet Been looking at using the iPad app to provide a "live" working wall in Y5 next half term.

— Colin Grimes (@MrGPrimary) October 27, 2015

This got us thinking about how we could use them too as a Live Working Wall. In our classrooms, we have Working Walls and on them we place examples of work, screenshots, photos and other items related out our current learning in English, maths and other subject areas. That Working Wall (in my room) sits at the back of the classroom and can be seen by the children for the five hours a day they're in class. It'd be more useful to have one they can access more frequently...

As previously identified, Padlet would be excellent for this, but so could a Google Doc or Slides, Lino and other similar online tools. Ideally, this would be in a 1:1 device setting and all pupils could update the Wall as and when they need to. In another setting, pupils could update the Wall when they have online access. In another class, there may be one computer or tablet available to update the Wall. Alternatively, the focus could be on the children adding to it in their own time. 

Whichever is used, the children are creating their own resource for them and their peers to utilise. Again, depending on devices available, they can then use it to aid their learning in a variety of ways. 

Here's an example of a similar 'Live Working Wall' we've previously shared (was originally on Wallwisher!): 

As always, should you have any additional ideas, resources or feedback on this idea, we'd love to hear from you...