Explanation checklist
This is more constructed by students than by you. It’s a checklist of what ideas or concepts they think must be included in the final explanation. This may start with very simple statements or even just terms, but the list should grow over time—added to by students, not the teacher.
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Again, as the students engage in cycles of reading, activity, and connecting with their everyday experiences, students add to this list. If they are missing some key elements of the final causal explanation, it should alert you as the teacher to modify your instruction to address these missing pieces.
The students need to know what it is they are trying to explain, so the checklist is often combined with the early development of an initial consensus model (see #1 or #2 of public representations of student thinking).
Watch Anna describe how she used an explanation checklist in high school chemistry.
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