The Success Criteria Playbook
A Hands-On Guide to Making Learning Visible and Measurable
- John Almarode - James Madison University, USA
- Douglas Fisher - San Diego State University, USA
- Kateri Thunder
- Nancy Frey - San Diego State University, USA
Sketchnotes by Taryl Hansen
What does success look like for your students? How will they know if they have learned? This essential component of teaching and learning can be difficult to articulate but is vital to achievement for both teachers and students.
The Success Criteria Playbook catapults teachers beyond learning intentions to define clearly what success looks like for every student—whether face-to-face or in a remote learning environment. Designed to be used collaboratively in grade-level, subject area teams—or even on your own—the step-by-step playbook expands teacher understanding of how success criteria can be utilized to maximize student learning and better engage learners in monitoring and evaluating their own progress. Each module is designed to support the creation and immediate implementation of high-quality, high impact success criteria and includes:
• Templates that allow for guided and independent study for teachers.
• Extensive STEM-focused examples from across the K-12 STEM curriculum to guide teacher learning and practice.
• Examples of success criteria applied across learning domains and grades, including high school content, skills, practices, dispositions, and understandings.
Ensure equity of access to learning and opportunity for all students by designing and employing high-quality, high-impact success criteria that connect learners to a shared understanding of what success looks like for any given learning intention.
Free resources
Success Criteria: An Essential (and often underutilized) Component of Teacher Clarity
Co-author of The Success Criteria Playbook John Almarode shares how expanding our perspective on what success criteria are and how we create and communicate them in our classrooms will have a noticeable effect on how our learners engage in the learning.
Developing & Using Success Criteria to Maximize Teaching and Learning
Whether face-to-face, hybrid, or at a distance, this webinar will introduce how best to support the development and implementation of high-quality success criteria, based on The Success Criteria Playbook.
3Ps in a Pod Podcast: The Success Criteria Playbook
Doug Fisher and Nancy Frey, two of the authors of The Success Criteria Playbook, discuss how to use success criteria in your classroom and understand how success criteria advances your students’ learning, on the 3Ps in a Pod podcast.
Success Criteria and Teacher Clarity Ensuring Equity of Access and Success for ALL Students
In this webinar series, we will move beyond just learning intentions and take a deep-dive into how best to support the development and implementation of high-quality Success Criteria.
The Purpose of this Playbook
Please enjoy this complimentary excerpt on The Purpose of this Playbook. You’ll discover an overview of the Playbook modules and why this work is essential to your PLC+s.
With over 30 years of experience in education, you learn to recognize those practices that make a difference in your teaching. The Success Criteria Playbook is one of those books. Focusing on developing high-quality success criteria, John Almarode, Douglas Fisher, Kateri Thunder, and Nancy Frey take success criteria to the next level by laying out a step-by-step process that helps teachers ensure every student has clarity and can be successful in meeting the learning intentions. Each module walks you through the process of developing success criteria that help break down barriers and maximize student learning. This book is a must-have in providing your students a clear understanding of what success looks like!
Educators, this book is your next MUST-READ whether you are just hearing about success criteria for the first time or are looking to hone your students’ abilities to articulate how they will know they have mastered your learning intentions. The Success Criteria Playbook is ideal for engaging in collaborative reflection through PLCs or personal reflection as you seek to make learning visible to your students. With a focus on equity in learning for all students, including those participating in distance learning, this book could not be more relevant to schools today.
Not sure how to know if your students are learning? Wondering if your students even know what success looks like for your lessons? The Success Criteria Playbook: A Hands-On Guide to Making Learning Visible and Measurable has your answers and more! As a classroom teacher it can be hard to know if your students are learning. It’s even harder to know how to adjust for differing assignments, tasks, projects, and evolving expectations. Not all learning is the same, and this book offers clear, teacher-friendly examples that I could immediately take and apply to my own classroom, in whatever scenario I found myself. This book offers wonderful examples from real classrooms that made visualizing this in my own classroom effortless. I was able to easily transfer this text into reality in my classroom. My students know what we are learning, but more importantly they know when they’ve got it, and those lightbulb moments are what it’s all about!
From classroom, school, and district implementation, The Success Criteria Playbook provides guidance to navigating the hub for all aspects of quality teaching and learning. John Almarode, Douglas Fisher, Kateri Thunder, and Nancy Frey provide the foundation for developing scaffolded
tasks and assessments while incorporating opportunities for feedback. This publication is a hands-on, practical compilation of realistic experience gleaned from classrooms across the world. Standard deconstruction and lesson planning processes start with success criteria. Keys to every learner knowing what they are learning, knowing where they are in their learning, and knowing where they ultimately need to be are found here. The Success Criteria Playbook is a true game-changer!
