Build Success Criteria Together

The strategy, as published

Exactly as it appears on the card

Part of Clarify Learning Intentions in 02 Formative Assessment, where it sits alongside its neighbouring strategies, the infographic and the thinking for the whole area.

Why you might use it

The problem it may help with

Criteria handed to a class arrive as your words, and your words carry your understanding, not theirs. Asking pupils what excellent looks like before they begin makes them do the analysis themselves, and the card is plain about why: criteria they articulate themselves land far more deeply than criteria handed to them.

The discussion is also evidence in its own right. What a class can and cannot name about quality tells you what they can and cannot yet see in good work.

What it might look like

One version of it, in a classroom

Before a piece of persuasive writing, the class reads a strong letter and lists what makes it work. The teacher collects suggestions, tidies overlaps, and the list on the board, in the pupils' own phrasing, becomes the checklist they draft against.

Try it

A way to begin

Next time you would normally display a success criteria slide, hold it back. Ask the class first, and see how much of your slide they build without you.

What to notice

Reading what happens

• The gap between what pupils propose and what you would have written. Missing criteria show you what they cannot yet recognise in good work.
• Whether pupils refer back to the list while working, or whether it stays on the board as decoration.

Things to think about

Before and while you use it

• Their language becoming the standard does not mean any list will do. You still steer: collecting, sharpening, and adding what the class cannot yet name, so the final criteria are both theirs and right.
• This pairs naturally with exemplars. Criteria are far easier for pupils to generate from work they can see than from a blank instruction.

Related strategies

Where this connects

• 📄 Exemplars Before Rubrics Show work at different standards before students start their own. Students spot quality in someone else's work more readily than in their own. A rubric tells students what quality is; an exemplar shows them. 02 Formative Assessment · Clarify Learning Intentions
• 🎯 Separate Intention from Task The learning intention is what to learn, not what to do. Finishing the task is not the same as achieving the learning. Keep them distinct in your planning and in what you say to students at every stage of the lesson. 02 Formative Assessment · Clarify Learning Intentions
• 🔍 Structured Peer Assessment Peer feedback only works when students understand quality. Use exemplars first so students assess against shared criteria. Without shared criteria, peer feedback is opinion, not evidence. 02 Formative Assessment · Students as Learning Resources
• 📏 Judge Against a Standard Zimmerman: self-judgement needs a reference, not a hunch. Give students the mark scheme or an exemplar to compare their work against, so evaluation is anchored to a real standard. 06 Metacognition & Self-Regulation · Self-Reflection & Evaluation

The wider thinking

Where the evidence sits

Wiliam and Leahy include co-constructed criteria among their practical techniques for clarifying and sharing what quality means, so that the standard is understood rather than merely displayed. The card’s attribution stands as published: Wiliam & Leahy.

The fuller picture, sources included, is in further reading and evidence for Formative Assessment.