Course Learning Objectives

• Every syllabus should have a short section delineating the course’s overall learning objectives, enduring understandings, and essential questions.

A list of textbooks and other required materials

• Recommended materials should also be listed.
• Ideally, required texts/materials should be listed chronologically in the order they will be used.
• Note if there is a specific edition of a textbook that needs to be used, or if any edition would be acceptable.
• List the materials that will be used on a regular basis in class so students plan to bring them to school consistently.

The homework policy and any other policies/expectations related to submitting assignments

• Include your policies about 
  • How and where to submit assignments (e.g. Canvas - not Teams or email)
  • Late work and extension policy
  • Policy about redoing work (if applicable)
• Teacher expecatations around assignments are included on the Expectations for Overlake Canvas Courses article

The grade weight scale

• The grade weight scale should align philosophically with the main learning objectives of the course (for example, if developing aural and oral competence is the main goal in a certain language class, written assignments shouldn’t represent 70% of the final grade, and so on).
• When considering weighting of assigments and points, it is strongly suggested to use either points to weight or categories to weight, but not both. For example, if you want to make major assesments worth 40% of your grade, weight the category at 40% but maintain the same point values as homework and formative assessments. OR don't weight the categories, but make the assessements worth more points. This makes the value of each excercise more transparent and easy to understand for both you and the students. 

Academic Integrity Expectations

• A link to Overlake’s academic integrity policy and to Overlake’s AI philosophy should be included. 
• Beyond that, there should be a section detailing the teacher’s general expectations. It’s entirely possible, in some courses, that these expectations may change from one assignment/assessment to another; this would be important to note in the syllabus and to state that students need to pay careful attention to the language and specifications of each assignment.

How and when to connect with the teacher

• Regular office hours (and if the teacher is available by appointment at other times)
• Classroom or other location to meet with students
• Asynchronous communication always via the Canvas messenging system 
• Timeline when students can expect a response from the teacher (i.e. within 24 hours, etc.). Please encourage our students to practice wellness and self-care (and focus on yours!) by not responding immediately to messages that come in late at night. 

Classroom expectations

• Any specific behavior expecataions unique to your class
  • Phone
  • Eating
  • Tardy
  • Laptop
  • Etc.