 Michelle Newell is a high school chemistry teacher at Foundations for the Future Charter Academy. Michelle helps her students consolidate concepts they're learning by creating checklists that provide students opportunities to reflect on their understanding of different learning outcomes outlined in the Alberta Program of Studies. I first try to make sure that it is in student-friendly language, so I do pair it with curriculum and documents, and our lesson, but I make sure it's in student-friendly language. And then I make sure that the kids know I am making some assumptions that you already know certain bits of information. So some of the information is there, but they may need to add themselves. So I do add class time when I first introduce it to make sure that kids know how to use it and how to reference their notes or their textbook to improve on the list that they're given. I find it really helpful because I took all three sciences and having all those workload at the same time. It helps with your time management a lot. It helps with just feeling that you just feel a sense of accomplishment, even if it's just one outcome that you achieved understanding in one day because then you know you're closer to your goals and having those like walking into class knowing today we're going to focus on this outcome and if I don't understand it I better know it before the next unit. Just knowing what you know and what you don't know and your strength and what to work on alone reduces a lot of the anxieties for tests. We can pull out this book. They've been taking notes along the way because it's really important they're adding to it. Key things that they got incorrect on their test or something they got right and they weren't sure why it was the correct answer. If they were guessing perhaps then they write themselves notes and it really gives them a little bit more independence in their studying. Eight lessons so you should have eight sets of notes. Any smaller outcomes that you see in your notes or that you notice on your first solutions quiz you want to be adding to the outcomes. I have written some for you. These are only starters. As you go through your quizzes there are four things for you to look for. One is evidence of any of these outcomes. What questions show that you have a strong understanding of the polarity of molecules or is this an area of concern? Would you say this is something that I need to work more on? In addition you're going to add some outcomes of your own, add some reminders and then same thing from your notes. Go through a couple of your notes in that 15 minutes if you're done with your quiz. Michelle built in class time for students to collaborate and build their knowledge together. They share their understandings and use information they discussed to add to their checklist for future reference making sure they're prepared to demonstrate thorough understanding of the outcomes they're learning. As the students review, collaborate and reflect on their quizzes Michelle is able to circulate and challenge her students thinking helping them understand the concepts they know well and the concepts it still require for the review and practice. So for chemistry because sometimes when you're in high school and you have chemistry it gets really overwhelming. Having those learning outcomes makes it easier for you to even plan your study because you think maybe I have seven outcomes to look for in the next test. I can split them maybe two today, three tomorrow and this makes everything a lot easier for you because then you can see the connection between different concepts and what kind of questions can be asked. In other area of learning it can... Since we learned this kind of topic or idea here in chemistry let's say biology for example or in any other class you have a bunch of separate topics or ideas that you need to focus on even though they may not be clearly split or they're extremely divided you can still have a general idea on what you need to focus on which is extremely important here. I actually specifically use it for biology because I find biology booklets and reading that amount of information sometimes are overwhelming for people and they think, oh I have to remember all this thing a lot of students think they have to memorize rather than understand biology I think because the biology notes they just find the outcomes for you at the beginning of the page I actually try to adopt something similar to this so I created a document for myself so I know this test we're going to look at the specific outcomes and whichever ones I don't understand then I ask questions about it in class. I use it because I did two biologies so when it got to Bow 30 it would really help that I knew exactly what happened in Bow 20 by having those targets and outcomes and going like, okay this topic from Bow 20 comes back up in Bow 30 like protein synthesis comes back up and that's really nice I feel like these targets really help for sciences and math I think the most effective way if there were time with your class would be to develop it with them so to start from the beginning going through a lesson and then at the end what are some important things that we should take away today and add them together when they develop it themselves it's much more effective I have found.