Beyond the Whiteboard: Why Clear Learning Intentions and Success Criteria Drive True Student Mastery

Written based on research and content developed by Dr. Sandra Markowitz, an experienced educator with 17 years in the field of Instructional Technology. Passionate about assistive technology, Universal Design for Learning, instructional strategies, and workflow solutions, Sandra brings innovative approaches to her teaching.

Picture this: you are taking your family on a vacation with a car full of passengers, BUT you never tell anyone the destination. You might encounter interesting scenery along the way, stop for lunch, check off milestones, but no one in the vehicle knows where you are all going or even how to tell when you have really arrived at your destination.

In many classrooms today, a similar dynamic unintentionally takes place. Objectives or “I can” statements are written on the whiteboard, tasks are assigned, and activities are completed. Yet, when students are asked what they are doing, the response is often a recap of the activity instead of the learning goal.

In her book Wiliam & Leahy’s Five Formative Assessment Strategies in Action, Kate Jones dives into the research of education experts, Dylan Wiliam and Siobhán Leahy. The foundational strategy in their framework addresses this exact challenge: clarifying, sharing, and understanding learning intentions and criteria for success.

When coupled with John Hattie’s Visible Learning research on Teacher Clarity (significant effect size of d=0.75), a truth emerges: learning intentions and success criteria must serve as a required best practice instead of an administrative compliance checklist. Jones’s book on Wiliam and Leahy’s research and John Hattie’s work on effective teaching strategies show that the first step to effective embedded formative assessment is clarity.

What Actually Is an “Embedded Formative Assessment”?

A formative assessment isn’t really a type of test, it’s a process. Interest in the idea surged after Paul Black and Wiliam published Inside the Black Box in the late 1990s. Today, the most widely used definition in U.S. education comes from the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), revised in 2018:

“Formative assessment is a planned, ongoing process used by all students and teachers during learning and teaching to elicit and use evidence of student learning to improve student understanding of intended disciplinary learning outcomes and support students to become self-directed learners.”

CCSSO chose the word process deliberately to counter the idea that formative assessment is a product or a specific instrument. That distinction is worth keeping in mind whenever a district evaluates something sold as a “formative assessment.”

What Does “Embedded” Add?

“Embedded” is Wiliam’s own term. His books Embedded Formative Assessment (2011; second edition, 2018) and Embedding Formative Assessment (2015), written with Leahy, describe assessments woven into everyday instruction rather than staged as separate events. CCSSO describes a range of formative practice, from in-the-moment checks to planned questions and interactions to assessments built directly into the curriculum. They also expect formative assessment to show up in every lesson.

That last point is worth explaining further. Many adopted instructional materials include their own “embedded assessments,” such as end-of-unit tasks and built-in checks. These tools can support formative assessment, but they are only one part of the process. Simply having embedded assessments in the curriculum does not mean the formative process is happening in the classroom.

The Three Fundamental Questions

Wiliam and fellow educational researcher Marnie Thompson organized formative assessment around three questions: Where is the learner going? Where is the learner right now? And how can we get there? Looking at each question from the perspective of the teacher, the student’s peers, and the learner produces five key strategies:

1. Clarifying, sharing, and understanding learning intentions and success criteria
2. Engineering effective classroom discussions, questions, and tasks that elicit evidence of learning
3. Providing feedback that moves learners forward
4. Activating students as instructional resources for one another
5. Activating students as owners of their own learning

Let’s break down what these three questions look like in practice.

1. Focus on the Destination, Not Just the Trip

Let’s address the first question: where is the learner going? In formative assessment research, the premise is simple. If learners don’t know where they are headed, the probability of everyone arriving at the destination drops dramatically.

Teacher clarity goes far beyond copying a state standard or writing an objective on the board. As Wiliam and Jones caution, learning intentions and success criteria have the potential to hurt rather than help learning if they are enforced in a compliance-driven way that wastes instructional time.

True teacher clarity requires intentional, ongoing conversation:

• What concept, skill, or understanding are we learning about today?
• What does quality work look like?
• How does today’s goal connect to our previous learning?
• Where are we headed next?

When educators take time to unpack and discuss these targets with students, the “destination” ceases to be an abstract lesson plan and becomes a clear, shared goal.

2. Learning vs. Performance: Avoiding the Activity Trap

The second question is: where is the learner right now? When instruction focuses solely on the activity or task completion, students can easily perform well in the moment. They may answer questions correctly immediately after teacher modeling without converting those concepts into long-term memory.

• Focus on concepts and skills over tasks: The objective is never simply “finishing the worksheet.” The goal is mastering the standard or skill.
• Differentiate success criteria from learning intentions: All students should have access to rigorous, grade-level learning expectations. Differentiation lives in the success criteria with varied pathways for learners to demonstrate mastery.

3. Learning Intentions Should Not Be Confined to a Single Lesson

A widespread pedagogical myth is that every single 45-minute lesson requires a brand-new, self-contained learning intention. Rarely is mastery concluded within a single class period. Instead, it is achieved through: 

• Leveraging spaced retrieval practice (significant effect size of d=0.71): Learning intentions should span multiple lessons and units. Returning to past standards days or weeks later through low-stakes retrieval checks tests whether content was truly internalized. (Learn more about spaced practice.)
• Formative assessment over time: Wiliam, Leahy, and Hattie emphasize that formative evaluation (d=0.48 to 0.77) is most effective as an ongoing feedback loop. Bite-sized formative checks over time allow teachers to identify misconceptions early and adjust instruction dynamically.

CCSSO frames this practice as clarifying learning goals and success criteria “within a broader progression of learning,” which is why a single lesson is the wrong unit of measure. In Wiliam’s terms, low-stakes retrieval checks and bite-sized formative checks are short- and medium-cycle formative assessments. They happen within and between lessons and units, while there is still time to adjust instruction. 

This brings us to the third question: where to next? Assessment evidence should inform the next step, whether that means revisiting a concept, providing targeted remediation, or offering enrichment to students who are ready to move ahead. In Progress Learning, each student’s Study Plan shows mastery by standard as checks accumulate, so both teachers and students can see progress over time. Together, they can see which standards the student has mastered, where support is needed, and what to focus on next. 

What This Asks of District and Campus Leaders

Teachers write learning intentions, but leaders set the conditions that make them work. Four decisions shape whether embedded formative assessment takes hold across a district.

• Check what walkthroughs reward

A look-for that only checks if an objective is posted on the board rewards the compliance habit Wiliam and Jones warn against. Instead, stronger look-fors ask whether students can explain what they are learning and what quality looks like, and whether the teacher is gathering evidence and adjusting within the lesson.

• Align the cycles around the same standards

Wiliam, Douglas Fisher, and Nancy Frey argue that short-, medium-, and long-cycle assessments must be deliberately aligned so the evidence builds into a coherent picture of student learning. At the district level, that means daily checks, unit assessments, and benchmarks measured against the same state standards. This way, a gap spotted in an exit ticket can be traced through to unit and benchmark results.

• Look for policies that undermine formative assessment

CCSSO names grading policies and pacing guides as school-wide issues worth reviewing when they conflict with formative assessment. Grading every quick check turns low-stakes evidence into a score students try to protect. A pacing guide with no slack leaves teachers no time to act on what the checks reveal.

• Fund sustained teacher learning

Wiliam calls effective formative assessment far from a “magic bullet” and stresses that it depends on sustained professional development. CCSSO recommends school-based learning communities where teachers reflect with colleagues on putting the practices into place. A single PD day on learning intentions will not change daily practice on its own.

Putting Research into Action with Progress Learning

• Standards-Aligned Clarity from the Start (Strategy 1: Where the learner is going): Every question, assignment, and assessment within Progress Learning is directly tagged to a specific state standard, allowing teachers to pull up standard descriptions to explicitly unpack the “destination” with students.
• “Bite-Sized” Formative Quick Checks (Strategy 2: Short cycle): Rather than waiting for unit assessments, teachers can use the Assessment Builder to create a quick 2-3 question formative check or exit ticket that gives immediate, real-time feedback. Quick Click Remediation closes the loop by analyzing performance across attempts, identifying up to three of the weakest standards, and assigning targeted practice in one click.
• Systematic Retrieval Practice and Spiral Review (Medium cycle): Learning should never be restricted to a single lesson, which is why Progress Learning makes it simple to build cumulative spiral assessments and bell-ringers by allowing teachers to easily integrate questions from previous units alongside current standards.
• Visual Success Criteria and the “Green Dot Challenge” (Strategies 3 and 5: Feedback and student ownership): Success criteria should be owned by the learner. Through the student dashboards and the Green Dot Challenge, learners have clear, visual insight into their personal mastery levels across every standard in their Study Plan, empowering them to answer three vital feedback questions: Where am I going? (the standards and learning target), How am I doing? (current mastery and progress toward mastery), and Where to next? (remediation and/or enrichment).
• A Campus-Level View Across the Cycles (For leaders): Teacher Dot Rank gives principals, instructional coaches, and C&I directors a campus-wide view of standards mastery by teacher or class sections, letting leaders see exactly where daily and unit-level evidence is adding up and where it isn’t.

The Road to Student Mastery

Clear learning intentions and success criteria are the starting point for embedded formative assessment, not the finish line. They guide instruction only when teachers continually gather evidence of student learning and use it to determine next steps, lesson after lesson and unit after unit. District assessment calendars, classroom walkthroughs, and instructional policies should support this process and give teachers room to act on what they find.

Ready to see how flexible, standards-aligned assessments can transform student mastery in your classrooms? Schedule a quick demo below to discover how Progress Learning gives educators the freedom to build everything from real-time exit tickets to comprehensive spiral reviews on their own terms.