The Course Overview block is a great way to see if you have new posts and assignments waiting for you in each of your courses when you first login. Single-clicking on the overview information for each course will expand the overview, showing you more information about each activity (see images below). It will also show you if you have submitted an assignment or completed a quiz, and if the activity has been graded. Clicking on the title of a forum, assignment or quiz will take you directly to that item in the course.
Note: Occasionally Moodle shows you that you have posts to read, but when you go into the course you can't find any posts. This is because students in another group have posted to the forum, but no one in your small group has posted since the last time you logged in. Unfortunately, at this time Moodle is not able to filter the number of new posts to only show those that pertain to your small group. We hope that this will change in the future.