1. Social Studies Methodology: Cornell Notes

2. Philosophy
The main idea is to focus in on cross-curricular skill building techniques.
Reading comprehension, functional writing, research-oriented learning, and reflection are all components to the Social Studies methodology.
The source book is entitled “The Write Path” for a reason.
Writing is something that happens daily.

3. Starting out
Modeling your expectations are a must if you want to be successful.
You can’t expect students to know exactly what you want coming into Day 1.
Use student examples and give students a visual handout as to what you are specifically looking for.
Practice, practice, practice.
Hold them accountable.
Stay consistent.
Great way to organize your notes and make them something useful for your students.

4. This is an outline I created for my students.
I often refer to it as the student’s “menu” of choices.
My students have access to this outline on my website. Some of you may want to print a copy to have students keep this in their notebook as a reference sheet.

5. Here is another student sample so you can see how easy it is to get quality work with limited time.
Will we receive results like this at first?
Probably not.
However, just like any other skill we work on, it is about practice.

6. Usages
As teachers, you don’t have to change how your notes are formatted technically.
The right side of the notes are for your notes.
If you like PowerPoint, go for it.
Roman numeral outlines, that works too.
Student generated notes from passages, not a bad example either.

7. Selling it
In my classroom, I stressed how if they were doing a good job with summaries and left side sections of the notes, they could study those and be successful on exams.
Selling the idea that if they put the effort now, it would be a way of reviewing all throughout and would cut down how much time is spent the night before the exam was a huge part of the “buy in”.

8. Don’ts Accept PowerPoint titles as acceptable left side material.
How does that help our students?
Accept low level questions as time goes on.
Growth should be occurring throughout.
Accept only vocabulary on the left side.
There are more things students could be doing as well.
Accept summaries that are only 1 sentence long that just uses the title of the unit as the bulk of its information.
These are supposed to be summaries of the unit.

9. Accountability and Consistency
You must hold the students accountable.
Yes, you need to grade their notebooks.
Don’t stress because it does get easier.
Big Ideas:
Use a rubric that students see beforehand.
Grade at the same time…each time.
Offer direct feedback at first.
Eventually, have students hold each other accountable by making students grade the notebooks.

10. Sample Rubric You can make this how you want for your class.
For example, I included a section on transition work in the classroom.
I also included a section grading the students on including the objective on the notebook.

11. Grading the Notebook
You need to take time in class to address each student and their notebook individually at least at first.
I did this activity two times in class and saw great improvements over time.
The first time through was rough but when students saw with samples, rubrics, and individual feedback what I was expecting, the scores improved.
By the 2nd semester, I had my students grading each other.
Students are their harshest critics so it was not just students giving good grades to students because they were friends.

12. Follow up questions 1. What did you learn or find interesting?
2. How can you apply this knowledge or information to your own classroom or lessons?
3. Did you find this information useful or relevant?
4. What specific information stood out for you? Please explain.
5. Do you have any follow up questions or comments? 12

13. Sources used
Dearie, Kurt and Gary Kroesch. (2011). The Write Path History/Social Science: Interactive Teaching and Learning Teacher Guide Grades AVID Press. San Diego

14. Contact Information
Jason Goodwin is in the Social Studies Department
If you have any questions about how to implement this strategy please contact him at: