Checklists

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The Situation

Your students find it difficult to manage multiple activities or steps to a task/assessment.

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The Solution

The brutal truth of the classroom is that your students will eventually forget what you told them. This isn’t related to poor teaching – it is the nature of the classroom. They are constantly in a state of information overload. It is natural that simple, little things to an assessment might be forgotten.

Checklists are a helpful way for students to keep on track with their learning.

Below is a checklist I used during a fantasy fiction unit. At the end of the unit, students designed their own board games based on the characters from their fantasy fiction unit.

Students were provided with a checklist that outlined was an abbreviated version of the rubric that would get marked upon. The checklist would allow them to achieve at least a C grade from their work. Of course, students can use this as a starting point to achieve a higher grade through consulting with the teacher.

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Another way to keep track of student learning, with regards to accountability, is to present a checklist on the whiteboard like the one below (Student names are presented on the left-hand side). As students are working on their project, they tick what they have completed. This is a very visual way to keep track of what has been completed and what students are working towards.

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Elsewhere, I have use a checklist to ensure that students are on track with their short story writing. Below, students select a narrative structure (In green) and use the checklist beneath to record whether they have used the correct language features in their story.

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