Sunday, March 15, 2015

Differentiating Student Note-taking

Been a while since I've been here, but this spring semester I'm going to try to use this space as a place to do some reflection on what my students are doing as well as the lessons that I am designing.

It can be hard to find a way to differentiate for students when it comes to note-taking. Most of them are used to writing down every single thing they see on the board. I try to teach them small skills to help them with this task, but I still find that difficult. They want to write down everything!

I've been practicing my own visual notes when I go to conferences and decided to teach my students about visual note-taking.

I like that way that Sunni Brown puts the key elements together below-easy cheat sheet for those that are nervous about drawing:




This style of note-taking is perfect for those that are visual learners or kinesthetic. Some of my students were panicking as I challenged them to this style of note-taking. I asked them to just take a risk and give it a shot. They took notes on an easy video we were watching. I had a handful of them come to me after class and say that they actually liked this way of note-taking. It challenged them to process the information and they found themselves remembering the info more than if they had just written it down in word-form. WIN!

Here's an example from a 7th grader of mine with some simple descriptions of bones she was viewing. She created these drawings on her iPad with Notability7TH GRADE! So proud of her artwork!





How do your students take notes? Check out my Bulb Portfolio for other student examples!

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