Podcast - In the Classroom - Episode 5: Helping Students Meet Your Expectations - setting clear expectations
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Episode 5: Helping Students Meet Your Expectations

You’ve been there before: “I’m setting clear expectations. Students know exactly what they need to do on this assignment/essay/test/project.” You’ve created what you thought was a great, completely doable assignment. You’ve made your answer key and put some thought into your rubric. But . . . students are doing terribly on it.

You look back at everything you’ve done: creating the assignment and rubric, delivering instruction, answering clarifying questions. You’re wondering, “Where did it all go wrong?” Has this been you? It’s been us. On more occasions than we care to remember.

Setting clear expectations for students may sound like a no brainer, but this is easier said than done. In this episode of the podcast, we're sharing strategies we've learned to help students find success.

Our natural inclination may be to say, “Note to self: Do not do this assignment again next year” or “Can these people do anything right?!” Once you push past those totally natural responses, take a beat. Is there something good here? Something worth trying to salvage? We like to think we have pretty good reasons for creating the assignments we do, so we often take the opportunity to reflect before we put the whole file folder, real or virtual, in the trash.

In taking this opportunity to reflect, we often realize the breakdown occurs because we aren’t setting clear expectations for our students. The more we’ve engaged in this practice, the more we’ve come to value the role setting clear expectations plays in our students’ ability and willingness to complete assignments/essays/tests/projects in the manner we expect. As a result, we learn something about our approach that enables us to make changes for the next assignment/essay/test/project.

Now we’re sharing what we’ve learned with you. In this episode of the podcast, we’re passing on strategies and practices you can put into place to help your students meet your (totally reasonable) expectations on (totally doable) assignments.

Other Strategies to Help in Setting Clear Expectations:

Are the questions you ask on reading assignments, quizzes, or tests not generating the answers you’re looking for? Here’s one trick you can use to improve how you write your questions and make it more likely students will meet your expectations.

Are you frustrated with the number of students who seem to completely skip over your directions? We’ve got some strategies you can use to get eyes on this important information.