Learning goals and intentions set for student’s should always be purposeful, in line with success criteria, and utilise engaging and clearly defined tasks (AITSL, 2017). Learning goals should be defined by student’s prior knowledge, the knowledge they are expected to have by the end of the year, and the gap in between. Following Vygotsky’s ideas on scaffolding and zone of proximal development, it is suggested that learning goals should be established which allow children to move from tasks they are competent in completing independently, to tasks they may need assistance and support with, before finally being able to complete these same tasks independently (Winsler, 2003). Learning goals may be different for individual students, depending on their varying backgrounds. What is essential is that the goals and intentions set for each lesson aim to challenge all students, and allow for them to become active, competent and thoughtfully critical learners (Hattie, 2012).

Within my sentence structure activity, I set challenging learning goals for children based on assessment of their prior knowledge. Over the year, students had been taught sentence structure using the following criteria; capital letters, full stops, finger spaces and making sure it makes sense. From looking at prior work samples, I was able to see that each student was struggling in a different area when it came to creating sentences. When teaching my sentence structure lesson, I questioned student's on their prior knowledge of what a sentence needs before reminding them of the criteria using a visual cue which they had been introduced to previously by their teacher. I placed an image of this same cue onto each worksheet to provide children with a reference point to check that their sentence met all the criteria. Setting this criteria challenged student's to expand their thinking from focusing on one element of writing (capital letters, finger spaces etc) to utilising multiple concepts to create their own correctly structured sentence. Having this goal explained verbally and clearly displayed to students on both the model and their own worksheets allows for clarity and equitable chance for all student’s to successfully achieve the learning goals. 

AITSL (2017) Spotlight: Reframing feedback to improve teaching and learning, accessed November 20 2020, https://www.aitsl.edu.au/docs/default-source/research-evidence/spotlight/spotlight-feedback.pdf?sfvrsn=cb2eec3c_12

Hattie, J 2012, Visible Learning for Teachers: Maximizing Impact on Learning, Routledge.