With Must Haves and Amazing Criteria teachers build a habit of establishing and clearly communicating their expected qualities of student work while students build a habit monitor their work and practice self-regulated learning skills. Criteria are the qualities that teachers want to see in students’ work.
Including Must Haves ensures that all students are focused on reaching the required standards or objectives. Must Haves may include, required vocabulary, using the word “because,” or supporting ideas with evidence.
Amazing criteria on the other hand, may include using advanced vocabulary, providing alternate strategies or perspectives, and including all group members in a response. Amazing criteria provide room to extend expectations ensuring that all students are challenged.
Increase intrinsic motivation through greater feelings of autonomy, belonging, competence and meaning. Students practice self-regulated learning skills that lead to greater and deeper learning.
Use annotations to gauge student learning and then adjust teaching as needed. Teacher also develop a practice of clearly communicating expectations to learners.
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Self-efficacy is linked to experiencing an appropriate level of challenge in tasks, also called the zone of proximal development – a task just beyond what a student can do independently (Vygotsky, 1987). Must Haves and Amazing criteria enable teachers to assign criteria to all, some, and/or individual learners to ensure learners with a wide range of abilities feel stretched while completing a common task.
Criteria provide a concrete means for students to notice their actions and how their efforts have led to learning. Teachers can direct students to annotate or circle the quality criteria seen in their work. For example, direct students to complete the assignment and then: circle vocabulary words used from the word wall, draw an arrow to show connections to previous assignments or something happening in the community, or put a star next to details used to make vivid explanations of ideas. When students examine their tasks over time, students can recognize their persistence and growth in working toward specific quality criteria in their learning. These reflections build self-efficacy and prompt goal setting for the student’s next steps.
In addition, quality criteria support teachers in offering specific actionable feedback and modeling reflecting on completed work to increase the quality. Teachers also benefit from using the same criteria to notice how their actions have led to student learning. Identifying and assigning students to reflect with specific quality criteria is a simple strategy that invites students to form a habit of noticing the impact of their actions on learning, promoting self-efficacy for both students and teachers.