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Checklists are a great idea. When I write a lab for students I always leave a little blank next to the item number so that they can check it off prior to moving on to the next step. I find it helps to keep students focused and helps them to do the correct step in the appropriate sequence. I see that there are some materials available on your website for teaching middle school students technical writing. They are a little dated. Do you know of any place where there are more current lessons?

thanks, T.R.

This thread offered me some insights and websites I can use. Thanks!

This is a timely post for me because I just finished grading a bunch of lab reports where the students left a number of items unaddressed because the item didn't get its own bullet point. One question in particular had three parts to it, and very few students did all three things they were asked to do. Perhaps if I had had them draw up a checklist of everything they were asked to do, this could have all been avoided.

Checklists were probably the precursors to product guides and rubrics. Our students definitely turn in more complete work when we provide them with these tools to help guide their productivity. Thanks for the website information. There is also a good book available in the NSTA Book Store that I have found helpful:
Science Educator's Guide to Laboratory Assessment by Rodney Doran, Fred Chan, Pinchoas Tamir, and Carol Lenhardt. They have it available as an e-Book, too.

Thanks for the link to the book, Carolyn. Eric, I have found checklists to be useful from everything from lab procedures to project descriptions. They help focus student attention and ensure that they turn in complete work.

I constantly having my students use checklists for assignments. Students use a writing checklist that helps them remember the steps for writing a paragraph. I also give them criteria checklists that help my students understand exactly what I looking for in assignments. In science, I give students checklists to follow when completing projects or experiments. Also, students complete self-assessment checklists that they use to assess their own assignments before they submit them. I find that having my students use checklists helps them know exactly what is expected of them. It also helps keep them stay on-task when working on a project. Checklists also help students become more self-directed because they have the checklist as a guide.

Love the resources....I'll be using them in my pre-service teacher courses. I personally use checklists often in my own personal and professional life. I think it's important that not only do we provide checklists for students, but also teach them how to come up with their own checklists. It might be based on a prompt they read (e.g write about three ways you can become "greener" and for each tell pros and cons) or their own project checklist of what steps needs to be done to complete their project. I use a lot of "think alouds" with my college students(yes, even college students struggle with this) so that they can get better at creating their own checklists.

I was fortunate enough to attend the NASA educator luncheon at the Indy NSTA conference. The speaker, former astronaut, went over just how important checklists are to NASA. I also find that my students do much better when they have an easy to follow guide that shows exactly what is expected on an assignment. This would be in addition to a rubric for any larger project or research paper/presentation.