Problem: Students passively copy down whatever I write on the board as notes, and/or flail about and miss (or mis-organize) key information.
Topic: Any.
But, use judiciously. I save it for days when I need to deliver some specific, important content (For my class, for example, the steps to solve 2-step equations)
I usually try to keep lecture-y time to a minimum, and this makes the lecture more active, but also really sage-on-the-stage central and takes a bigger chunk of classtime. In general, I like it best as a second class, after some more exploratory activity to introduce the concept.
Process:
- If your students struggle as much as mine, you might give them a lightly structured guide for their note taking. And/or talk about good note taking: types of information, purposes, ways of organizing etc.
Here is a generic note-taking organizer (as google doc or PDF)
- Teacher presentation (model solving some type of problem, explain some piece of content etc.) Be extra clear/slow/thorough – but resist the urge to write note-like things on the board.
- Stop periodically, ask students to look at their notes and share one ‘note’ with a neighbor (think/pair/share)
- Repeat until content is covered.
- Then, in groups, students review their notes and choose a few points they want to contribute to the collective.
- Groups share their selected points while teacher records, probing for information to fill in gaps or misunderstandings, until the class has a complete set of notes on the topic (I’m grateful for a computer/projector set up, but I’m confident you could make this work with whatever tech you have)
- Make a copy of the notes for each student and distribute.
Why:
– By my count, students will have run each piece of content through their brains approximately 11 times using five different modes (no really, I counted, I think it’s 11 if they’re actively participating: listen and write; then read, choose, speak, listen during the pair share; then read, choose, speak, listen and read again making the collective) That’s a lot of processing for an activity that looks a lot like a lecture.
– Note taking is a skill. It’s one my students need, but we don’t have a lot of time to teach. This way, they get some support from the organizer, they get to see the best ideas of their peers, and watch the organization of the teacher transcribing it. They’ve also had a couple rounds of reviewing their work and identifying the best items – I hope this helps them produce more of these kind of items when they’re on their own for note taking.
– Also, note taking, they’re not good at it on their own (yet!). This way I knew everyone got a solid set of notes to use as a reference.
– The group dynamics. The least visible, maybe the most important. They’re collaborating to create the thing together, as a group, where everyone contributes. And, when they tell me what to write, they own it. That final, printed official looking reference on two step equations, they made that that, not me. It’s a nice reminder of their knowledge and capacity.
