Using Canvas for EOY Heightened Review

[chelsea_mckillo]

One thing that we do at my school every year is what we call heightened review. This occurs during the last two weeks of instruction before the students take their exams. Heightened review is when teachers try to review everything that has been covered during the entire school year within two weeks time. I always hated heightened review because I felt that it was a waste of times and teachers were just trying to squeeze as much information into the students' heads as possible with no real understanding of each students individualized needs. 

This year, I decided that we were no longer going to review all of the information from the entire year into those two weeks. Why? Because most student don't need to review ALL of the information. Why try to cram all of that information into two weeks when one student may only need to review a few things from the year and another student may need to review more? This is why I decided to use Canvas as a way to personalize heightened review for students. 

I decided to make a module that students had to work through. First, students read a passage in a google doc from an ELA mock EOG. Students had to show that they annotated the passage by submitting their google doc before they could move on to the next task. Students would then answer questions from the mock EOG under quizzes. The results from that quiz would tell them which standards they mastered and which ones they did not. Students would then complete a data tracker.  From there, students were given links to different blend spaces that focused on the standard that they received the lowest score in. Finally, students had to reassess their understanding of that standard on another quiz before moving on to the next passage. 

Using Canvas to personalize learning like this for my students made it much more meaningful for them and for me. We were able to really hone in on the areas that students actually had to review instead of wasting their time. This was just a start but as I learn more and more about Canvas, I have many ideas of how I can improve this even more for upcoming school year.