Getting Started with Checklist

What are checklist?

The checklist allows the students to move through the daily, weekly, or monthly content at their own pace, place, and path.  A teacher will deploy a checklist at the start of the week, and the students have a given period to complete all the required activities. This provides the students the opportunity for the teacher to meet with students in small group settings while differentiating the content.  The students can then pick an choose what they would like to learn first, second, and third.  

Note that all of the activities related to the learning target for the day — for example, the independent practice, digital content, and the future ready skill all tie back to the mini-lesson. 

What do you mean by Future Ready Skills?

Creativity, Collaboration, Communication, Critical Thinking, and Connectedness are the future ready skills within the blended learning checklist.  All of these skills are needed to be successful in college, career, and community.  The extra perk is that the students will remember the content longer once they can create, collaborate, communicate, or use critical thinking skills to demonstrate an understanding of the content.  

What is Digital Content? 

In the three phases of blended learning, we refer to digital content as an online program that is adaptive, provides data, students learn, or relearn content.  If the students are watching a teacher video, we recommend using Edpuzzle.com to check for understanding.  

What if the students need the mini lesson before starting on the checklist? 

If you are kicking off the checklist for the week, a suggestion would be to give a quick (I mean less then ten-minute) whole group lesson to showcase the content for the week. I also recommend that teachers use the lock symbol to showcase that the students cannot start to work on the checklist until after the mini-lesson.  Also, read about Ghost Groups from our previous blog post.  Students can start on all of the different tasks except for the independent practice. 

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Are you ready to try a checklist? 

We have complied sample checklist to try out in your classroom setting.  Each checklist is editable through Google Docs. 

Phase One Checklist 

This checklist provides the students with what they need to complete each day.  This is a great stepping stone from everyone rotating from one activity to the next to now allowing the students to work at their own pace but they still need to complete the daily activities by the end of class.  Note that for this checklist, I used the idea of Waze to motivate the students to complete the weekly checklist.  If you don't know about Waze, watch the quick video on how Waze works to inform other drivers about road hazards, traffic jams, speed traps, and so on. Click on the image below to purchase your copy of the weekly checklist for only .99

Free Phase One Checklist 

If you are just getting started with checklist and Phase 1 blended learning process, click on the checklist published below on this blog.  This free checklist is a great way to get started on providing stuudent ownership to the students.  

Phase One Checklist Template

The below checklist works excellent for students in the lower grades.  The teachers that I currently work with enjoy being able to list out the different options for the students in a daily outline.  Tips for this checklist, the teachers tend to use the back side of the checklist a reflection or quick formative assessment that the students can complete throughout the week.  This checklist also showcases the idea of allowing students to work on two different digital content tools within a given amount of time.  Finally, I showcased the lock being used in the Future Ready Skill studio.  The lock means that the students can not start that activity without the key.  What's the key?  A mini-lesson with the teacher.  

Phase Two Checklist

A phase two checklist has less teacher control as far as what is completed each day, but the students will need to complete the checklist within a given amount of time.  The students now have the opportunity to complete an activity on the checklist as long as there is not a lock or signal that they have to wait for further instructions.  Click on the below checklist and start moving toward a Phase Two blended learning environment. ​

Weekly Phase Two Checklist Template with Planning Guide

After working with over 1,200 teachers in 2018, the checklist listed below was by far our most popular.  The teachers enjoyed using the template because it planned out the week for themselves as well as the students.  The students enjoyed being able to see how long they should work on a topic as well as prioritizing the different activities on the checklist.  This template also includes planning pages as well as student accountability spreadsheet.