Co-constructed Success Criteria in Grade 2

For one of our Writer's Workshop lessons this week, the learning intention was:

We are learning to write an interesting informational text introduction.

Students were given the task of constructing success criteria for this learning intention. According to Shirley Clark, author of Outstanding Formative Assessment:

The impact of co-constructed success criteria is that:
* Pupils become more independent
* Pupils have more ownership over their learning and ongoing assessment
* Pupils can decide criteria for which help is needed
* There is higher achievement when pupils have seen good examples and can follow or choose from the success criteria they have generated
(Outstanding Formative Assessment, page 86.)

To begin this lesson, I showed students an example of a bad introduction. Students thought it was hilarious! They started thinking of how it could be improved and shared their ideas on Grade 2's Google Docs account. Students wrote Success Criteria based on how they decided to improve the bad example of the introduction. Some students noticed that the Success Criteria that they created was similar to the Information Writing Checklist.

Instead of saying "Cheetahs are fast," get your readers' interest by writing: In this informational text, you will learn about cheetahs. They are very fast creatures. 


Success Criteria: I wrote a beginning in which I named a subject and tried to interest my readers.

Initial Success Criteria created by students. They compared it with the Information Writing Checklist to add to it and put it in their own words so they it was easily understood.

Class-written informational text based on the Success Criteria they created. Many students were experts on how to take care of dogs. Can you notice the improvement?

Yura reviews her research about cats and compares it with the class-constructed Success Criteria. She is thinking about writing strategies that she will use to make her introduction interesting for her readers.