Members of the MiddleWeb Discussion List and other interested
teachers are joining together to explore the Writing Workshop
and other ideas about supporting young adolescent writers and
readers. Juli Kendall, a reading-writing teacher/coach in Long
Beach, California, is helping moderate the discussion. Last year,
Juli kept a weekly journal from her Reading Workshop.
This year, Juli is continuing her journals, but this time she's
focusing on her Writing Workshop. Find out more about our project
at our Reading/Writing Workshop homepage.
You'll find Juli's background article here.
Links to many of the tools created by Juli and her colleagues
are embedded in these journals. Most often, when you click on
them, a PDF file will begin to download. You'll find a list of
the downloads here.
If you'd like to join the daily discussion that parallels Juli's
Journals, find out how here.
It is difficult to say exactly when I realized that note-taking
in our thematic unit of study about Sunspots was a disaster on
the order of, say, the Titanic, but it was probably at some point
between the copying of
1) the entire first page of the Internet booklet, "Our
Very Own Star, The Sun."
and
2) Helen's exclamation, as we talked about her notes from "Auroras, Mysterious
Lights in the Night Sky," that "I wrote everything
down just the same way as the author."
No. I take that back. I probably knew it the day before, during
a writing conference, when I noticed that Sophanna had copied
all her "notes" about Galileo word by word from the
text, "Galileo
Sees the Light."
If having kids take notes hasn't already given you a first-rate
teacher headache, you might get one from managing all the issues
that appear once you start doing research and inquiry projects
as a part of a thematic study.
As so often happens, this all seemed like a good idea at the time.
Ideas about teaching note-taking
What I really wanted, of course, was that every student would
be actively engaged in note-taking --practiced and knowledgeable
about how to get information from a variety of sources. So I looked
around for a good way to teach this important skill.
Strategies for Integrating Reading & Writing in Middle
and High School Classrooms by Karen Wood and Janis Harmon
(NMSA) proved to be a good resource for how to teach kids to take
notes without copying. Chapter 15, "Helping Students Learn
From Listening and Viewing" has a section on "Initiating
Note-taking for Research."
"This teaching strategy uses listening to help kids learn
how to take notes," write the authors on page 139. The idea
is to avoid copying by following these simple procedures. (My
comments are in parentheses.)
Select a passage to read to the classSelections may be fiction or nonfiction as long as the excerpts contain enough information to make note-taking easy. (We're reading the article, "Galileo Sees the Light.")
Instruct the students to listen carefully while you read and to think about what is important in the passage. (I'm only reading part of the passage at first.)
After reading, model how to take notes with the whole class. Think aloud what information you recall and write this down on chart paper. (I'm using the T-Notes form with questions in one column and facts in the other.)
Read another selection (the next part of the passage) and have students take notes and generate questions.
Continue this procedure until the passage is completed.
Have students share their notes and questions with the whole class. (I have kids share with a partner or in small groups.)
Lead a discussion in which students consider what research projects they could do based on their notes and questions.
I found some other great recommendations on the MiddleWeb Reading
and Writing Project Listserv. One of the options for teaching
note-taking is the two-column note format. In this email to the
MiddleWeb Reading and Writing Project Listserv, Ellen Berg described
the way she and the other teachers on her team use T-Notes (two-column
notes):
Our team taught our students how to take notes using T-Notes. Essentially you draw a big T on the paper to divide the paper into two columns. On the left hand side are questions, vocabulary words, problems, etc. On the right hand side students put answers, definitions, solutions, etc. I have taught kids to use them in two ways:
1. As a tool for taking notes out of textbooks: With this form, students preview the chapter, write down vocabulary words, and change headings and subheadings into questions. They then read the chapter, taking notes as they go. This has helped them focus on reading for meaning, and the results have been excellent.
2. As a research tool: Before researching, I had kids generate a list of questions they wanted to answer with their research and write them down on the left hand side of the paper. As students researched, they wrote the answers they found and added and deleted questions. This also was very successful. Because students were focused on finding bits of knowledge, there was none of the copying you see in a lot of research units. They were more likely to just write down the facts/answers, so when they put it into the final product, the words and thoughts were their own. They also learned to skim and scan and look for key words, something I'd tried to teach before but was never very successful at. They finally had an authentic use for the skill.
Through the recommendation of Patricia Watson, I discovered Jim
Burke's website, englishcompanion.com.
Many of the templates for note-taking, etc., which he developed
have been moved to the Heinemann site, where his book Tools
for Thought is available. The appendix, which is 46 pages
long, contains a multitude of bookmarks and note-taking forms
and can be downloaded in a PDF.
If you scroll down to page 172, you'll find a template/worksheet
for T Notes.
The Big 6 Skills website was suggested by Naomi Smith. It has
a great lesson plan to teach note-taking, "Reading
for Information p; The Trash N Treasure Method of Teaching
Note-Taking." These seven steps to help kids take notes
are listed in the article:
1. Show a prepared question, including the underlined keywords and list of related words.
2. Scan the article until the appropriate heading is located.
3. Place a slash at the end of the first sentence and read it. Ask, "Does this sentence answer the question?"
4. If the answer is no, tell the students that that sentence is "trash" to them. Go on to the next sentence, placing a slash at the end.
5. If the answer is yes, underline the first phrase and ask if that phrase answers the question. If the answer is no, underline the next phrase and repeat the question.
6. If the answer is yes, read that phrase word by-word, asking which words are needed to answer the question; these are treasure words. Circle those words, then write them in the appropriate place on whichever organizer the students are using. Those that do not answer the question are trash words.
7. Demonstrate the process again, allowing the students to practice, using copies of the article. Allow students to independently practice a few times before they begin their own research.
What I'm going to try
So, here's my plan for teaching kids to take notes:
First, I'll use the "listening" procedures to teach
note-taking without copying.
Then, I'll use the Trash N Treasure system to teach them how to
evaluate --"Does it answer the question?"
Finally, I'll use a T-Notes template to help them organize (questions
on one side, facts on the other).
Next time, my challenge is to get comfortable with Notestar.
It's a way to help kids take notes online.
And it looks like a great tool!
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