Reviewing and summarizing

The teacher consistently reviews and summarizes content with students.

• The teacher reviews and summarizes what has been taught at the end of each lesson, highlighting relationships among ideas.
• The teacher facilitates activities in which students summarize what they have learned or apply it in new contexts.

Connecting ideas

The teacher effectively organizes and integrates content to make it easier for students to remember and understand.

• The teacher explains connections between current lessons and previously learned facts, ideas, concepts, and skills.
• The teacher invites students to make their own connections across the curriculum.

• Do you summarize big ideas at the end of lessons and review them periodically?
• Do you ask students to summarize and synthesize what they are learning?
• Do you make explicit connections between lessons?
• Do you help students make connections within and across the curriculum?

• Do you refer to relevant current events or other meaningful applications of what students are learning to facilitate transfer of knowledge and skills?
• Do your assignments require students to build on prior learning?
• Do your assessments incorporate topics and skills from earlier lessons?

• Use KWL charts to track what students know about a topic, what they want to know, and what they learn.
• Explain to students how to underline, highlight, and/or annotate texts and then summarize the main ideas in their own words.

• Begin and/or end lessons with references to previously taught topics and how they are connected.
• Ask students to reflect on what they have learned and how it relates to other ideas or experiences.