My goal for this year is to co-create success criteria for real-world learning and inquiry to action projects. In order to work towards that goal, I first implemented the process of co-creating success criteria with my students through writing. I did this for two reasons: we are in the process of immersing fourth graders into real-world content right now, and my goal is to introduce them to all of our science and social studies content for the year before asking them to select a topic for an inquiry project, and writing is something we are constantly working on improving so they can use this success criteria on a weekly (or daily) basis and will be very familiar with the process when we start to discuss our inquiry to action projects.
I selected summary writing for my students to create numbered exemplars and success criteria for each number, because fourth graders constantly work on summaries, all year long. Summarizing nonfiction texts, and specifically articles, is something that is a challenge and feels new to many fourth graders, so everyone needed to become more familiar with it. Still, my students are working at many different levels, so this co-created visual helps everyone to personalize their goals and find ways to improve their own writing. We also work on writing things like narratives, descriptive writing, and persuasive writing in fourth grade, but those topics change throughout the year, while summaries are something that we work on and practice all year long, so that made the most sense for creating this display. We still co-create success criteria for the other writing that we work on, but it looks a bit different with children "signing off" on areas that they master during one-on-one writing conferences. To start this activity, my teammate and I both asked our students to write summaries about the same article. Then, we met together and "swapped" work between our classes before we chose 6-7 exemplars for our students to work with. We chose examples that had clear strengths and weaknesses, and that were at a wide variety of writing skill levels. In my classroom, students worked in groups of 2 or 3 to examine the exemplars that I gave them and put them in order from 1-7, labeling the numbers with sticky notes, in addition to writing a few strengths or weaknesses for each one to explain why they chose the number they did. After they worked on this, we came together as a class to talk about a few of the numbers that they chose - and students were clearly VERY invested, so the activity had the desired effect. After we agreed as a class on which exemplars should be numbers 1 and 2, students were very heated about their own opinions and so I organized the rest of the exemplars in a sort of "polling" manner - assigning numbers based on how most groups had organized them. I still think that when I revisit this process with my students for our inquiry projects, we will be more practiced at having collaborative conversations and more easily able to discuss the topic for longer, but in this case some students had a difficult time compromising on their own ideas about which exemplars should be which numbers. I used students' post-it notes to create lists of success criteria for each level of summary exemplar so it is clear to see what things they need to add or change to move up to the next level of summary-writing, and posted the exemplars on the wall above the criteria lists. We started using our "wall of summaries" right away, as a way for students to guide themselves as they are working on summaries, as well as a way for them to "grade themselves" before they turn in assignments. I think this is going to be a great resource for my students going forward and the process definitely worked in creating buy-in for my students as they work on summaries. They understand the purpose and function of our summary exemplars and success criteria, and know how to use them to help direct their own growth as writers. This is because they were part of the process of creating it. In the past, I have created exemplars in a similar display for writing, but I have typically created it myself and used it with students in writing conferences. Students did not always fully understand its purpose when they were not part of the creation process. However, this year my students are able to independently assign a number "grade" to their own summaries and clearly see what they need to do to improve it. The work they have turned in has improved greatly after implementing this. This is a huge support for student autonomy in my classroom, and I look forward to seeing continued growth in their summaries because of it. To implement this same process for success criteria with our inquiry to action projects, I plan to use the same process: collect a few exemplars of projects, have students work in groups to discuss and analyze them, then put them together based on what the class decides are the most and least important traits of a good project. This writing activity has helped to pave the way for that. I also plan to work specifically on how to have academic conversations with my students prior to co-creating success criteria again so that they are more comfortable with that.
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AuthorCourtney Hayes is currently a teacher at Lone Tree Elementary Magnet School in Colorado. She has teaching experience in both primary and intermediate grades, and is passionate about personalizing her instruction to meet the needs of all students. Archives
April 2021
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