End of the Week Check-Out

By now, you may have heard about our "End of the Week Check-Out" system. In brief, it's an organizational routine to help students learn to manage their work for the week and organize how they spend their time in class. Its intent is to help students to develop the skills to track their own workflow, both in our classroom and beyond.

Here's a quick overview of how it works in practice: 

Each Monday, students take a new Things to Do List. This is theirs to use throughout the week. I keep a version at the front of the room so that kids can compare theirs against mine at any time to make sure they're not missing anything:

Here's our class Things To Do list from last Monday afternoon. There are three items on it so far.

Throughout the week, I schedule "Work Periods" into our days. In addition to the things that had been assigned earlier in the week, I'll generally add a couple of additional items for them to work on. For example:

On Wednesday, I added two more items to the list. Students are given a one-hour "work period" to work on the new items, as well as those assigned earlier in the week.

One of the key points is that students are welcome to work on their list in whatever order they like. The catch is that everything needs to have been checked by me no later than Friday afternoon. I often give work back to students with notes for revisions and corrections that they need to make, so it's in their best interest to turn the work in for assessment earlier rather than later.

Later in the week, the list has grown.

Occasionally, we'll have a 15 minute "Get Organized" portion of class, which allows students to quickly arrange their work, compare it with their Things to Do list, and see exactly what they've done already, and what still needs to be done. It also helps them to think about budgeting their class time (and their time at home, if need be).

A "Get Organized" session from Friday. 

On Friday, we have "End of the Week Check-Out." When all of their work for the week has been completed, turned in, and returned to them with an acceptable mark (meaning they've made any corrections that I've requested), they are ready to "Check Out" for the week. I sit with each student individually and we go through their list, making sure everything is accounted for. Anything that isn't completed by Friday afternoon gets sent home as homework for the weekend.

When a student "checks-out," they are then able to use the extra time to work on their own personal projects tailored to their individual interests. For example, on Friday, one student worked with Dr. George to help pilot our middle school online portfolio system, while another sat with a computer teaching himself how to use Apple Pages, while two others worked together to begin writing scripts for an Ancient-Civilizations-themed play. 

We've been using this system for three weeks now, and everyone seems to be benefiting from it. As the year progresses, these lists will become more and more individualized, as each student is likely to have different project types, math goals, and assignments from their language teachers.

I encourage you to add this to your repertoire of school-related conversation topics: "How are you doing on your Things to Do list this week?" Checking in with your children on this topic helps them reflect on how they're using their time, while keeping you connected to the work that they're doing at school!