This article is an edited excerpt from an episode of the High Tech High Unboxed podcast. You can listen to the full episode here.
In this excerpt, Ron Berger explains Learning Targets to Unboxed editor Alec Patton. Ron is the Senior Advisor on Teaching and Learning at EL Education. He’s the author, and co-author of several indispensable books on education, and he was an elementary school teacher for 28 years, from 1976 to 2003.
Ron Berger:
Let me start by sharing a story about Springfield Renaissance School in Springfield, Massachusetts.
Springfield Renaissance School is an urban school with predominantly low-income families. In 2012 the school was visited by the Massachusetts governor, Deval Patrick, because for the past two years, 100% of their graduating class had been accepted to college.
I was asked to come down to help out with the visit, and when I got there, I met the governor and his entourage, but I didn’t lead the visit—that was done by student ambassadors
On the tour, Deval Patrick turned to one of the students and said, “Can I ask you a question? Are you a good student?” And she said, “Mr. Governor, that’s a really hard question. It’s a very broad topic.” And he said “I mean, do you get good grades? It’s pretty simple, I think.”
The student said “Let me tell you about my learning targets: I have met and exceeded many of the learning targets for my major courses. For example, in mathematics and history, I’ve met all of my learning targets so far this year. But I’m taking Latin and I’m really struggling to meet certain targets.”
The governor said, “Excuse me, what are learning targets?” And she said, “Those are the expectations of all the content and skills and competencies that we’re supposed to have.
He said, “Oh, those are your learning objectives. I had those for all my classes when I was a teacher.”
The student replied, “Well, sir, I apologize. I don’t mean to disagree but I do disagree with you here, because it’s not like learning objectives that the teacher holds. These learning targets are mine. No adult in this building knows all of the learning targets I’m expected to reach, I am the only one who knows that. And I know exactly where I am in meeting my targets for every single discipline, and every single subject. These are my pathway to graduation and college acceptance, and I’m charting that myself.”
And he just stood back and said “This is really remarkable to hear,” because it wasn’t just that this student was determined to go to college, it was that she knew, in every single subject, what skills and competencies and content that she needed to cover and where she was struggling and where she was not and where she was exceeding things.
Ron Berger:
Because a learning target needs to be “owned” by the student, not the teacher, it needs to be worded so that students understand what they’re aiming for in their learning, and understand how to assess how close they’re getting to that place. So the learning target should say to the student “See the top of that mountain? That’s where we’re trying to get to. And you’re going to be in charge (with support) of tracking your progress towards that summit.”
For example, in algebra, here are three possible learning targets:
Learning targets are always phrased as “I can…” and they empower students because what’s important is that the student can do those things—it doesn’t especially matter where they learned how to do them. So if the student learned how to graph linear equations from her teacher, that’s great! But if she learned it from Khan Academy, that’s fine too. If she learned it from her older sister at home tutoring her, that’s great too.
This also means students can demonstrate their mastery in many different ways, because assessment focuses on the skill itself rather than on a specific quiz or test. If a student, for example, wanted to show you that she has met those three targets, she could show you homework assignments where she succeeded in doing this; she could show you quizzes or tests that demonstrate this; she could show you a project she did that required these skills; or she could demonstrate the skill right in front of you: Give her an equation, and she will graph it.
Alec Patton:
When a learning goal is focused on content knowledge, why do you use “I can” rather than “I know”?
Ron Berger:
Oh, good, I love this! Now I’m going to get geeky about learning targets.
The most important thing about a learning target after the “I can” stem is the verb—because the learning target needs to be assessible! A student has to be able to demonstrate their competency or knowledge. Here are some phrases that lend themselves to assessment:
So if you want students to learn content knowledge, “I can list” and “I can describe” are assessible. If the verb is passive, like, “I can understand”, it’s not a very good learning target because kids can’t demonstrate it. They might say, “I can understand it. You just can’t see it that I do.”
That’s why “explain” is one of my favorite verbs in a learning target: you have to understand something pretty well if you’re going to explain it to somebody else.
