Learning Targets

Writing learning targets scares me and I do not feel confident in this area yet. I don't know what it is that destroys my confidence here. There is a part of me that wants to say "We didn't use learning targets when I was in school" but that would be admitting defeat. Not to mention that is a pretty lame excuse. I'm an English Major, I have written a lot more complicated things. So why does this simple sentence scare me?

I really appreciate the breakdown that we've been given to write the learning targets: Who + Verb + Object. This helps me so much. Now I just have to pick the right verb or object because the "who" is given.

Learning Targets unpack the standards in student friendly language. It specifies what the students will be able to do during and after the lesson. It is a stepping stone on the pathway to the assessment. The targets are how we arrive at the knowledge the student needs to have for the assessment. The idea is to gets the students to focus on the learning instead of the grade. If the students "can identify what they are learning", they will perform better on the assessment than "those who can not"(Marzano).