How to give learners what they need to know

Target setting has become a key strategy to improve standards for everyone in education: administrators, teachers and pupils. While targets alone don’t raise achievement, they can increase pupils’ motivation and help focus their efforts. There is also some evidence to suggest this is especially true for boys.

For targets to work at any level, people need to be committed to them. Helping young people to engage with targets is a complex process that depends in particular on users being clear about what they are trying to achieve and how they will know that they have been successful. In the classroom, this means making a habit of sharing learning intentions and success criteria with pupils.

This Learning Set title is designed to help teachers to:

• discuss the importance of intentions, targets and goals
• share their own experiences of using learning intentions, targets and goals with pupils
• reflect on how effectively they share learning intentions and success criteria with pupils at present
• explore practical ways to share learning intentions and success criteria with pupils more effectively

It also includes materials to support specific follow-up activities to help teachers:

• write learning intentions in child-friendly language
• share success criteria with pupils
• get pupils to formulate and use their own targets