CSAI Resources: Supporting Teachers in Implementing CCRS and Formative Assessment
Learning Goals and Success Criteria
Establishing Learning Goals and Success Criteria is the first step in planning formative assessment.
Learning Goals describe what students will learn (not what they will do) during a lesson—one or more periods
of learning. They guide lesson design and formative assessment processes. Learning Goals are derived from
the Building Blocks of the standards (i.e., steps towards meeting the standard), and they should state clearly
what students will understand or be able to do by the end of the lesson. Teachers might write one or multiple
Learning Goals from a Building Block, depending on the depth and scope of the learning it describes. Success
Criteria are derived from Learning Goals, but they are more specific. They explicitly describe student
performances of understanding or skills—what students will say, do, make, or write—to demonstrate that they
have met the Learning Goals.
Guidance
Learning Goals Success Criteria
Describe what learning students are Describe what students need to say, do, make, or write to show that they have
to develop (an understanding, met the goal (i.e., what are the performances of a skill, understanding, that will
principled knowledge, skill, or a demonstrate that the learning goal has been accomplished, etc.?).
process) as a result of this lesson.
Start with a verb (e.g., apply, Start with a verb (e.g., explain, describe, write, model).
characterize, understand).
Be sure that the Learning Goal is Be sure that the Success Criteria are aligned with the Learning Goal, and are
manageable within the context of indications of achievement.
one lesson.
Write in language that is Write in language that is understandable to students so they can use the criteria
understandable to students. to monitor their own learning. Teachers will need to explain the Success Criteria
at the outset of a lesson, and provide exemplars if necessary, to make sure
students understand what is expected of them
Examples
Learning Goals Success Criteria
Differentiate between the concepts Correctly select “<” or “>” in inequalities of the following type -3 __ -7, 3 __ -7,
of magnitude and position for -7 __ -3, and then justify their selection.
signed numbers.
Explain why -7 is less than 3, even though 7 is a larger number than three.
Recognize the structure of Create number sentences using repeated addition, from a given set of objects.
repeated addition and understand Make an accurate drawing of their number sentence.
that repeated addition can be
expressed as the number of times Correctly describe the number of repeats in a concrete representation (e.g., “I
a number repeats. have 6 repeats of this set of 3 things”).
Correctly and precisely use “times” to express the number of repeats.
From Building Blocks, Learning Goals, and Success Criteria
[Link] and [Link]
