AS/A2 – Making Notes Supporting Students Learning.

AS/A2 – Making Notes

Supporting Students Learning

Introduction

Aims To explore the skills required

in note-taking from texts. To identify the difficulties

which students experience when note taking.

To propose a range of strategies that can be used to support note taking.

Let’s Think About It …

Look at the article on RE and Thinking skills.

Reflect for a few minutes on how you would make notes on this article.

With a colleague share how you approached the task.

Are there similarities / difference in approach.

Why Take Notes?

Stops the mind wandering and focuses attention

Forces the student to make sense of the text

Encourages the student to reflect upon the ideas in the text

Extends the memory Acts as a brief aide-

memoire

Important to Think About…

The teacher needs to be clear about the purpose of the note-taking, eg aide-memoire for revision, later recall or an essay.

  Making notes gives reading and listening a purpose, and

demands concentration. It focuses attention on the text

Effective note-taking forces the writer to try to make sense of the written or spoken text and to think about the ideas within it.

Important to Think About…

Reading to learn is made more

efficient by note-taking. The

process of taking notes extends the

memory: which can support

revision in the future.

Methods for making the notes are

likely to include:

bullet points and key words.

some may also use charts,

diagrams and tables.

Note-taking may include:

Close reading/listening Making sense of the original text Determining what is of use and relevant Identifying relationships between ideas Understanding how the writer has

arrived at the key ideas Critically reflecting upon the validity of

the ideas in the text Selecting ideas appropriate for the

purpose of the task Transforming the language of the

original into a form which is meaningful to the reader

Abbreviating language to produce a concise summary

Note-taking - Skills

Note-taking is not a single skill: it is a composite of different skills.

Notes to support essay writing may be very different in content and form from notes to support revision.

Note-taking to support learning involves: close reading and comprehension; note-takers must be able to identify main

ideas, supporting detail and key words. a range of thinking skills – evaluation,

synthesis, analysis and application.

Note-taking - Skills

Note-takers must: make judgements about the validity

and relevance of what is being said; be able to draw distinctions

between key ideas and supporting ideas;

be able to make connections between ideas, identifying similarities and differences;

When writing, note-takers must be able to transform the detail of the original to a more concise form.

The Problem with Students’ Notes

Lack of purpose Pupil not monitoring her own

reading Lack of ownership of ideas Uncritical acceptance of ideas Over-dependence upon the

language of the original Failure to use an effective

note-taking strategy

The Problem with Students’ Notes

Openness and lack of clarity of purpose provide insufficient support for the student. Students need to know why they are taking notes, before they undertake the task.

The student may not be skilled in reading texts critically: they may accept without question the authority of print.

They may not be monitoring their own reading: they may not be asking themselves whether or not they understand what they are reading. As a result they are not truly engaging with the ideas in the text.

The Problem with Students’ Notes

The student may have difficulty in

transforming the original language

into their own.

The variety of skills required to be

an effective note-taker means that

teachers need to be aware that

individual students and different

note-taking activities may require

quite different sorts of support

Let’s Think About It …

Resource sheet 1.0 describes four pupils who experience some difficulty with note-taking.

Reflect in pairs on each of the support strategies described in the left-hand column of Resource sheet 1.1 and indicate in the right-hand column which pupil or pupils would benefit from using it.

Let’s Think About It …Note-taking Support Strategies Student(s

)Pupils are asked to highlight specific categories of information in different ways..

Pupils are asked to highlight the sentences that articulate the main points of the text or of each paragraph.

Pupils are asked to delete sentences that repeat ideas or support main ideas

Pupil A

Experiences difficulty in selecting material. She has great difficulty in identifying the main ideas in a text. Her notes are often as long as the text itself, and often include irrelevant and unnecessary supporting detail.

Pupil B

Invariably copies the original text and states that he cannot think of his own words.

Supporting Note-Taking

Physically limiting the space available to record notes - as in grids or diagrams - is effective in encouraging pupils to take ownership of ideas.They limit the opportunity to copy and put pressure on pupils to summarise, synthesise and articulate ideas in their own language and guide the selection of relevant material.

Some pupils who find note-taking difficult benefit from staging the note-taking process and require support at each stage. For example, such pupils might be asked to highlight categories of information in a text before completing a grid to articulate their understanding.

Supporting Note-Taking

The development of pupils' note-taking skills is as much dependent upon constructive feedback from the teacher as any other literacy skill. Consequently teachers should not consider pupils' notes as forbidden territory for intervention.

The strategies described in Handout 1.0 while designed to support pupils' note-taking skills, are merely scaffolds which are designed to move them forward to their own preferred '' style(s).

Supporting Note-Taking

It is important to ensure that they experience the full range of note-taking forms and have the opportunity to record notes in textual, visual and diagrammatic forms.

Pupils also need to be taught that presentational devices such as headings, sub-headings, layout, size of writing and highlighting can be used to emphasise the relationship and significance of ideas in notes. In order to make this point, they need opportunities to view a range of different note-taking models and reflect upon the reasons for their effectiveness.

Moving Forward

Compile a portfolio of examples of effective note-making undertaken by students for different reasons, so that students have models which they can analyse and use to support their own attempts.

Collect a sample of students' notes to use as the basis for a subject team discussion. Consider the teaching issues it raises and some of the strategies contained in this module.

Identify a class in Year 13/14 and review your students’ approaches to and difficulties with note-taking. Use Handout 1.0 design a range of strategies to address the issues which emerged from the survey.