1. Scaffolding, Reading & Lecture Notetaking
Freshman Friendly workshop II

2. Guiding Questions
How do we get students to reveal their organizational structure?
How can we help students build rich, meaningful knowledge structures?
How can we translate our expert knowledge organization into a structure students can use?

3. What’s wrong with their notes
Writing down everything the instructor says, free form
No organizational structure, hierarchy of ideas
Fail to recognize “importance” cues
Failure to use them later (assuming they are usable)

4. Problems
My instructor writes in one column on the board and then erases the info before starting the next column.
My instructor stands in front of what he is writing
I am an international student and cannot read cursive
My teacher speaks really fast
We are always racing to get through the ppt, I can’t write that fast

5. Importance of good notetaking
Ranks in the top three skills students say they need most in their first year
Students who receive training in notetaking capture 60% of “critical points” versus 37% for untrained students

6. General guidelines
Pause and look – how many students are still writing?
If playing a video, turn on CC
Allow students time to compare notes
Make notetaking important
Use notes for an activity. Have them answer questions, identify key concepts
Students turn in notes and receive points for completeness and organization

7. Solutions
Pitfall #1: Assuming students will be able to identify important information and take useful notes. Note-taking activities can be fraught with problems, particularly if the content is disconnected from prior knowledge.
Solution: Provide a skeleton of the lecture info with some key info inserted, some omitted
Sample lecture activity
Skeletal lecture outline HANDOUT

8. Teach notetaking Discuss / practice / model different methods Cornell
Mindmaps
Cornell Handout and video – discuss
Mindmap handout - discuss

9. Solutions cont.
Pitfall #2: Assuming students know how to "study." The truth is that many students do not know how to go about learning material on their own.
Solution: Pre-exam, use notes for in-class review . Have students create a 3x5 notecard to be used for exam, only from notes.
Solution: Introduce different ways of using their notes: quizzing themselves with note cards, playing review games, and creating test questions for one another. Practice vocabulary together every day. Work on creating mnemonics to remember difficult sequences. Help students realize that learning is a process, not a night-before-the-test memorization activity.
Solution: Postexam - For frequently missed exam questions, have everyone find the date when that content was covered and see what they have in their notes that relates to the question.

10. Reading and notetaking
Pitfall #1: Assuming students will be able to identify important information and take useful notes. Note-taking activities can be fraught with problems, particularly if the text is above the student’s reading level. Often students start writing immediately, taking wild guesses about what might matter. They blindly gather bits and pieces without a sense of how the facts relate to one another.

11. Reading solutions Walk students through a Preview of the chapter
Identify Chapter objectives, title, headings, visual elements, chapter summary
*Give them questions to answer along with “read chapter 5 for next class” / Review questions to be answered in advance of starting to read (this is also a good test strategy to teach)
Have them relate some part of the chapter to an active assignment. Example
Social media used to support business
Social media reading activity and handout
Then video

12. More on notetaking and reading
Encourage students to write questions (much like Cornell lecture notes)
Give students a partial outline and have them fill in the missing parts as they read
Help students break down reading load, map on calendar the reading schedule
Have students answer questions in class ONLY from their reading notes

13. Reciprocal teaching Predicting Questioning Summarizing Clarifying
Connecting
Reciprocal teaching activity – TWO HANDOUTS

14. Other Jigsaw reading / notetaking Student Reflection exercise
Reading HANDOUT
Then HANDOUT Reflection – do and discuss

15. References
Reference: Cohen, D., Kim, E., Tan, J., and Winkelmes, M. (2013). A note- restructuring intervention increases students’ exam scores. College Teaching, 61 (Summer),
Billmeyer, R. & Barton, M.L. (2002), Teaching reading in the content areas. Midcontinent regional educational laboratories.