Interacting with Notes

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When using a teaching strategy to introduce, scaffold, or reinforce information, it is important that it reaches students with various learning styles and intelligences.  Note-taking is a teaching strategy that when used in an interactive way can meet the educational needs of all of the students in the classroom.  When strategies are used to incorporate talking (not just the teacher) and visual stimulation into note-taking, students are able to interact with the content which in turn will increase achievement.



There are many different ways that traditional note-taking can be modified to meet the needs of all students.  Here are some of my favorites:


Doodle Notes: Doodle notes allows the writer to draw (or doodle) the notes in a way that relates the content to the notes and incorporates various other graphic aspects in the notes. These can range from intricate or general.  They can be bought or kids can make them (I recommend the latter). Great examples of this and resources (free and with a cost) can be found here (from the people at MathGiraffe).



Illustrated Notes: Illustrated notes can be used to help students interact with long passages.  In this strategy students read passages and focus on the main idea of the passage.  They then draw one picture per main idea in margin beside the passage.  In some versions of this students also add captions to these drawings.  Great examples of this, along with research and examples like the one below, can be found here.


Interactive Note(book)s: Interactive Notebooks are a great way to get students interacting with notes.  Whether it is gluing a foldable template or foldables created from scratch into a composition notebook or mixing traditional notes and foldables in a binder (this is the method that I use), this is a strategy that will get students involved.

There are MANY other methods of note-taking that get students interacting with content at higher levels.  These strategies provide opportunities for students to:

  • broaden their perspectives
  • extend their thinking
  • design
  • evaluate their work
  • use their own work as a resources 
  • create 
  • select relevant information and evidence 
  • initiate questions

What ways do you use to get students interacting with notes?



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