The Success Criteria Playbook
Sketchnotes by Taryl Hansen
Ensure equity of access to learning and opportunity for all students by designing and employing high-quality, high-impact success criteria that connect learners to a shared understanding of what success looks like for any given learning intention.
- Grade Level: PreK-12
- ISBN: 9781071831540
- Published By: Corwin
- Year: 2021
- Page Count: 224
- Publication date: January 29, 2021
Review Copies
Review copies may be requested by individuals planning to purchase 10 or more copies for a team or considering a book for adoption in a higher ed course. To request a review copy, contact sales@corwin.com.
Description
What does success look like for your students? How will they know if they have learned? This essential component of teaching and learning can be difficult to articulate but is vital to achievement for both teachers and students.
The Success Criteria Playbook catapults teachers beyond learning intentions to define clearly what success looks like for every student—whether face-to-face or in a remote learning environment. Designed to be used collaboratively in grade-level, subject area teams—or even on your own—the step-by-step playbook expands teacher understanding of how success criteria can be utilized to maximize student learning and better engage learners in monitoring and evaluating their own progress. Each module is designed to support the creation and immediate implementation of high-quality, high impact success criteria and includes:
• Templates that allow for guided and independent study for teachers.
• Extensive STEM-focused examples from across the K-12 STEM curriculum to guide teacher learning and practice.
• Examples of success criteria applied across learning domains and grades, including high school content, skills, practices, dispositions, and understandings.
Ensure equity of access to learning and opportunity for all students by designing and employing high-quality, high-impact success criteria that connect learners to a shared understanding of what success looks like for any given learning intention.
Author(s)

John Taylor Almarode
John and his colleagues have also focused a lot of attention on the process of implementation – taking evidence-based practices and moving them from intention to implementation, potential to impact through a series of on-your-feet-guides around PLCs, Visible Learning, Visible Teaching, and the SOLO Taxonomy.

Douglas Fisher
Douglas Fisher is professor and chair of educational leadership at San Diego State University and a teacher leader at Health Sciences High and Middle College. Previously, Doug was an early intervention teacher and elementary school educator. He is a credentialed English teacher and administrator in California. In 2022, he was inducted into the Reading Hall of Fame by the Literacy Research Association. He has published numerous articles on reading and literacy, differentiated instruction, and curriculum design, as well as books such as The Teacher Clarity Playbook 2/e, Your Introduction to PLC+, The Illustrated Guide to Teacher Credibility, The Teaching Reading Playbook, and Welcome to Teaching!.

Kateri Thunder

Nancy Frey
Nancy Frey is a Professor in Educational Leadership at San Diego State and a teacher leader at Health Sciences High and Middle College. She is a credentialed special educator, reading specialist, and administrator in California. She is a member of the International Literacy Association’s Literacy Research Panel. Her published titles include The Illustrated Guide to Visible Learning, Welcome to Teaching Multilingual Learners, Teaching Foundational Skills to Adolescent Readers, and RIGOR Unveiled: A Video-Enhanced Flipbook to Promote Teacher Expertise in Relationship Building, Instruction, Goals, Organization, and Relevance.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Module 1: What are success criteria?
Module 2: What are the challenges to creating and implementing success criteria? How do we overcome those challenges?
Module 3: How do success criteria pave the way for equity?
Module 4: Creating and implementing effective "I Can"/"We Can" statements
Module 5: Creating and implementing single-point rubrics
Module 6: Creating and implementing rubrics
Module 7: Creating and implementing success criteria through teacher modeling
Module 8: Creating and implementing success criteria through exemplars
Module 9: Co-constructing criteria for success
Module 10: Different types of success criteria for different aspects of learning
Module 11: How do we use success criteria to foster meta-cognition
Module 12: How do success criteria support deliberate practice and transfer of learning?
Module 13: What is the relationship between success criteria and feedback?
Module 14: How do we use success criteria to fulfill the promise of equity?
References
Reviews
With over 30 years of experience in education, you learn to recognize those practices that make a difference in your teaching. The Success Criteria Playbook is one of those books. Focusing on developing high-quality success criteria, John Almarode, Douglas Fisher, Kateri Thunder, and Nancy Frey take success criteria to the next level by laying out a step-by-step process that helps teachers ensure every student has clarity and can be successful in meeting the learning intentions. Each module walks you through the process of developing success criteria that help break down barriers and maximize student learning. This book is a must-have in providing your students a clear understanding of what success looks like!Barbara J. Lane
Educators, this book is your next MUST-READ whether you are just hearing about success criteria for the first time or are looking to hone your students’ abilities to articulate how they will know they have mastered your learning intentions. The Success Criteria Playbook is ideal for engaging in collaborative reflection through PLCs or personal reflection as you seek to make learning visible to your students. With a focus on equity in learning for all students, including those participating in distance learning, this book could not be more relevant to schools today.Kathryn Campbell
Not sure how to know if your students are learning? Wondering if your students even know what success looks like for your lessons? The Success Criteria Playbook: A Hands-On Guide to Making Learning Visible and Measurable has your answers and more! As a classroom teacher it can be hard to know if your students are learning. It’s even harder to know how to adjust for differing assignments, tasks, projects, and evolving expectations. Not all learning is the same, and this book offers clear, teacher-friendly examples that I could immediately take and apply to my own classroom, in whatever scenario I found myself. This book offers wonderful examples from real classrooms that made visualizing this in my own classroom effortless. I was able to easily transfer this text into reality in my classroom. My students know what we are learning, but more importantly they know when they’ve got it, and those lightbulb moments are what it’s all about!Christen Wenger
tasks and assessments while incorporating opportunities for feedback. This publication is a hands-on, practical compilation of realistic experience gleaned from classrooms across the world. Standard deconstruction and lesson planning processes start with success criteria. Keys to every learner knowing what they are learning, knowing where they are in their learning, and knowing where they ultimately need to be are found here. The Success Criteria Playbook is a true game-changer!
From classroom, school, and district implementation, The Success Criteria Playbook provides guidance to navigating the hub for all aspects of quality teaching and learning. John Almarode, Douglas Fisher, Kateri Thunder, and Nancy Frey provide the foundation for developing scaffoldedJosh Maples
tasks and assessments while incorporating opportunities for feedback. This publication is a hands-on, practical compilation of realistic experience gleaned from classrooms across the world. Standard deconstruction and lesson planning processes start with success criteria. Keys to every learner knowing what they are learning, knowing where they are in their learning, and knowing where they ultimately need to be are found here. The Success Criteria Playbook is a true game-changer!
Review Copies
Review copies may be requested by individuals planning to purchase 10 or more copies for a team or considering a book for adoption in a higher ed course. To request a review copy, contact sales@corwin.com.
Related Professional Learning
Related Signature ServicesRelated Institutes
- 2026 Annual Teacher Clarity Conference - opens in a new tab
- Teacher Clarity Playbook Certification - opens in a new tab
Related Webinars
- Developing & Using Success Criteria to Maximize Teaching and Learning - opens in a new tab
- Success Criteria and Teacher Clarity (Part 1): Ensuring Equity of Access and Success for ALL Students - opens in a new tab
- Success Criteria and Teacher Clarity (Part 2): Ensuring Equity of Access and Success for ALL Students - opens in a new tab
Related Resources
- #CorwinTalks: Making Sense of Visible Learning - opens in a new tab [Blog]
- 3Ps in a Pod Podcast: The Success Criteria Playbook - opens in a new tab [Podcast]
- Access to companion resources is available with the purchase of this book.
- I Can and We Can Statements - opens in a new tab [Lessons and Strategies]
- Introduction: The Success Criteria Playbook - opens in a new tab [Lessons and Strategies]
- Module 2: Challenges of Creating and Implementing Success Criteria - opens in a new tab [Lessons and Strategies]
- Success Criteria: An Essential (and often underutilized) Component of Teacher Clarity - opens in a new tab [Blog]
- Success Criteria: An Essential (and often underutilized) Component of Teacher Clarity - opens in a new tab [Blog]
- The Purpose of this Playbook - opens in a new tab [Lessons and Strategies]