3 Recommendations to Improve Notetaking Skills in the Classroom

One of the biggest struggles that any student struggles with is the ability to take effective notes that will allow the student to study and comprehend the information at a later time–which is usually during an assessment. I want to give you my three recommendations to enhance and improve the note taking skills of your students. These strategies have been proven to be effective and research shows that students of all levels have shown an increase in comprehension of the content information, as well as improvement in study skills and organization.

Recommendation #1:  CONCEPT MAPS–can create a visual aide or reference to the information being learned by the student. These types of notes can be used in several different ways to enhance learning for all students. I personally enjoyed using concept maps in my teaching strategies because my students were better able to make connections to the materials, as well as have organized study guides. There are several different types of concept mapping that include:

Star or Spider Maps

Chapter Maps–I had my students complete these styles of notes for their reading assignments. See the video below on how they work.

Chapter Map Video

Fish bone Maps

Cycles and Processes Maps

Compare and Contrast Maps

Flashcards and Pairings

Recommendation #2: SQ3R— which is a reading strategy short for:

Survey! Question! Read! Recite! Review!

This strategy will help build a framework for students to understand their reading assignments. I first learned of this strategy of note taking when I was a sophomore in high school and at that time I hated it because it was so time-consuming. However, now upon reflection as an educator, I find this strategy very rich and power for student understanding and comprehension.  Check out this link to find out more about how to incorporate this style of note taking into your classroom. SQ3R–How it works.

SQ3R Video

Recommendation #3: CORNELL NOTES

This note taking method is a very popular method, however it can be a difficult task for many students who have learning disabilities. This  method allows students to take notes on one side of their paper and then create key words or clues in the other column so that student can easily review or find important studying details. If you prefer the Cornell Notes style you might want to allow your students to use a color coding system to help them find key information more quickly. Check out the video below to understand what I am talking about.

Cornell Notes with Color Coding

According to Boyle, Forchelli & Cariss (2015), students should learn how to use note-taking skills or a strategy to help them engage in the lecture and become active note-takers. Accommodations have been shown to only enable the learner to continue their lackluster note taking. The basic skills are needed to create avid and accurate note takers. Try out some of these strategies in your classroom to build and enable your students to become great note takers!!

There are various other examples of great note taking strategies. Many of the strategies will benefit a vast range of student abilities. With the advance in technology there are numerous strategies that would benefit struggling readers, those students with learning disabilities and others that need help with study skills. Check out a few of the resources that I found for this topic below.

Note-Taking

5 Methods of Notetaking

Supportive Notes

REFERENCE

Boyle, J. R., Forchelli, G. A., & Cariss, K. (2015). Note-taking interventions to assist

students with disabilities in content area classes. Preventing School Failure, 59(3), 186-195. doi:10.1080/1045988X.2014.903463

Teaching Literacy–a difficult SPED task

The biggest challenge that I faced during my practicum was trying to figure out how to make accommodations and modifications to the reading materials for my students. Many of my students read below grade level and some of them even had reading disabilities including Dyslexia. One of my major projects during that teaching semester was to assess my students reading abilities. One student in particular presented me with a very difficult challenge. This student was high school age, but the science teacher had him reading at a fourth grade level within a grade level textbook. Upon further investigation I found that each content area teacher within the school had the student reading at different grade levels.

This situation is not that uncommon. Many schools and teachers are not fully prepared or provided the resources to assist students with learning disabilities to be able to read grade appropriate level materials. In my experience, I assessed my student using the CTOPP-2 and found that the student was reading at the first grade level. Here is a 14-year-old boy diagnosed with Dyslexia that is reading at different levels in each content area class and using dated materials that do not match up to the common core standards for a high school student of his age–just so the teachers can ensure that he is understanding some of the material that relates to the content area. In this case it was Science. He was reading fourth grade science books and getting credit for his freshman science credits.

The underlying issues is that many of the materials that are available to special educators area specialized readings that allow student to comprehend material, but only at specific grade levels. There are very little materials that are out there to allow students to read the proper grade level material but with accommodations or modifications that would allow them to comprehend the much more complex literature of the content area material for their actual current grade level. The resources that are available are usually very costly or the school or district do not have the resources to provide the new types of technology or they do not have knowledge about new accommodations or modifications. Many of the schools or districts also do not go beyond the one typical assessment of the students reading abilities and keep that student at that level without reassessment or any further testing, unless they are challenged to or requested to by parent or another professional.

I believe that teaching students to read complex content area curriculum information is essential to the student being able to advance their educations past high school, but are being dis-serviced by schools, districts and teachers all over the country because many educators are ill-informed, uneducated, lazy and not provided the resources that are needed to properly accommodate or modify curriculum, especially complex literature for each content area.

Technology you might say is the answer. However, one of the accommodations that I tried to employ with my student was getting the textbook at the fourth grade level into a digital format. With the help of my supervising teacher, we contacted the publisher and created an online account that we could use with all of the students. The students could now read the material on the computer rather than in the textbook and that was about it. The publisher did not provide a “read aloud” feature, but only a translator and dictionary feature with their software. The publisher did not provide any of the textbook in PDF form, so that we could even use any online software or apps to help my student with having the material read to him or for him to be able take notes or make highlights.

According to Lauterbach (2013),  the success of students with (Learning Disabilities) LD in content area classes depends on teachers’ ability to support student literacy needs while teaching content. The sole responsibility of teaching literacy is placed on teachers, but when you look closely their jobs are undermined by administrators, districts, state/county governments, departments of education and other funding sources. More resources are need for our students to be able to become better readers and more waves need to be made about it. If you have students that are in similar situations or abilities, please stand up and ask for more resources–even educate yourself about more how to teach literacy to special needs students.

RESOURCES

Lauterbach, A. A. (2013). How expert secondary special education teachers conceptualize teaching literacy in their content area to students with learning disabilities (Doctoral dissertation, ProQuest, LLC, Ann Arbor).

 

 

RAFT Writing Strategy

When I was a student teacher one of the strategies that I used and found very helpful for my students to connect to the content learning area of social science was the RAFT Writing strategy.

The RAFT Writing strategy allows the student to take different perspectives and write in many forms to be able to demonstrate understanding within a lesson, a unit of study or as an assessment. The strategy asks student to write based off of four situational prompts:

Role of the Writer: Who are you as the writer? A pilgrim? A soldier? The President?

Audience: To whom are you writing? A political rally? A potential employer?

Format: In what format are you writing? A letter? An advertisement? A speech?

Topic: What are you writing about?

I found that my students had to really think about what they were writing. They struggled with writing in this strategy because none of my students in the class had ever written or used this strategy before. I am confident that if I was able to continue to have my students write on a consistent basis and without the influence of my master teacher who preferred to use a different method that my students would have caught on and been able to become better writers, as well as make more connections with the material that we were learning in the social science content area. I also think that this strategy is beneficial for students because they are able to learn and practice writing in various formats that are required to write in when they are subjected to the standardized testing each year.

When I choice to use the RAFT method of writing it was based on the demographics of my student population who consisted of many English Language Learners (ELL). This strategy was great for that population since it allowed them to practice the different methods and perspectives of the English language. This strategy can also benefit many other students to make better connections and demonstrate understanding of the learning material, especially in the social sciences. I love this strategy to teach content learning material.

The research shows that the benefits from the RAFT strategy are that students must think creatively and critically in order to respond to prompts, making RAFT a unique way for students to apply critical thinking skills about new information they are learning. RAFT writing is applicable in every content area thereby providing a universal writing approach for content area teachers.

If you would like to implement this strategy into your classroom here is how you could begin:
1. Explain to your students the various perspectives writers must consider when completing any writing assignment.
2. Display a RAFT writing prompt to your class and model on an overhead or Elmo how you would write in response to the prompt.
3. Have students react to another writing prompt individually, or in small groups. It works best if all students react to the same prompt so the class can learn from varied responses.
4. As students become comfortable in reacting to RAFT prompts, you can create more than one prompt for students to respond to after a reading, lesson, or unit. Varied prompts allow students to compare and contrast multiple perspectives, deepening their understanding of the content.

Here is an example of a RAFT for the social science content area:

R: Citizen
A: Congress
  F: Letter
T: Taxation

I found some links to help you get started with the RAFT strategy in your classroom.

History Writing Fix

RAFT Handouts

Using the RAFT Writing Strategy

Differentiated Instruction: a Rant

When I was completing my first student teacher experience within the social science content area, I had a lot of issues with my master teacher and her vision and guidance within using Differentiated Instruction (DI) with my students.

You see, most of my students were English Language Learners. I was teaching at a Title I school that was 80% Hispanic. My master teacher kept telling me that I needed to differentiate my instruction, I needed to better engage my students by relating to their backgrounds and experiences. So, when I watched a short video on differentiated instruction for my CEP 842 course at Michigan State University–A light bulb went off.

I WAS differentiating my lessons and continually changing my methods to try to reach the students and in the process lost myself as an instructor. Differentiated instruction is a great method to engage and incorporate students that need assistance–however, many teachers and administrators are focusing on the wrong parts of the differentiation– in my opinion. Hence, the video demonstrates that things can get out of control and the administrator just reverts back to their original critic of the teacher’s methods. Creating a never ending spiral of out-of-control teaching.

Carol Ann Tomlinson, the differentiated instruction Guru, states that there are four parts to differentiating instruction: Content, Product, Process and Learning Environment. The issue at hand is that in order to figure out whether an individual teacher is differentiating effectively–time is needed to see the outcomes. Many supervisors and administrators are not allowing for the growth time in the process. This is demonstrated through the over-valued expectations of teaching students in major content area the subject matter that they will tested on within the same semester. Meaning students and teachers are only given a few months to teach a full years worth of standardized material. Talk about differentiating–many teachers are then placed in the spot of what to teach and what not to teach. This situation can cause numerous issues, especially for students with learning disabilities. Those students are not allowed to have a full process or product portion of differentiated instruction–since teachers must stick to the strict timeline to be able to cover ALL of the material on a standardized test.

This type of approach is not a successful way to use differentiated instruction since it only focuses on content. Which brings up a major flaw that is found in using differentiated instruction–in that administrators and teachers, if not using a balanced approach to differentiated instruction, can use it inappropriately and be damaging the learning process for students who need the extra help to learn the material that is possible through a successful and balanced differentiated instruction.

For my ELL students, in the social science class, they were not given a balanced differentiated instruction approach because my master teacher forced me to focus on process. By focusing on the process of my instruction, I completely lost sight of the product, due to the fact that I need to try a new method or create new learning process everyday or every lesson–without regard to any of them being effective or not. The content was also forced on me because I was teaching within the Spring semester and those students were all going to be tested on the content through the standardized tests that would be administered a mere two and half months into the semester. So that meant I had to teach 15 units in about 8 weeks or so. I had no real time to ensure that my students would even be able to master or grasp the material being taught because I was forced to focus on process and only through the lens of my teaching strategies used not the effectiveness of the learning of the students.

I believe that differentiated instruction is a good method to use, however, it cannot be successful when pressures and requirements are placed on good teachers to teach certain topics within mandated time-frames. That leads to the thought that students either know the information or not. It basically throws out any idea of being able to teach students with disabilities, successfully.

Grant Wiggins, creator of Understanding by Design (UbD), is a champion for differentiated instruction and has many great ideas about successfully implementing differentiated instruction. He had a great response on his blog (Granted, and… ) about an article that said differentiated instruction does not work. Dated January 15, 2015, On differentiation: a reply to rant and a posing of questions:

“Yes, DI is difficult – even Carol Tomlinson admits that. Excellent teaching leading to significant learning of all students is very challenging. So is calculus, but I suspect Mr. DeLisle is not prepared to say that calculus teaching is a boondoggle and farce because it is often done poorly or not at all in some high schools.”

Grant makes a great point and highlights that the real issues with teaching any subject is the effectiveness of the teacher’s actual methods and strategies, as well to my point that the focus of an administration or a teacher can devalue the effectiveness of said teaching methods. Which in this case is differentiated instruction.

Only from my reflection on my student teaching experience and the continued pursuit of my personal education was I able to see the flaws in the approach that I was given during my student teaching experience. Through the actual experience and reflection, I am now able to know that a well-balanced approach and emphasis on each part of DI will allow for the best outcomes for students. If I do decide to go back into the classroom, I would definitely make sure that my approach was different, as well as detailed to allow the best outcomes for my students. I am also now more knowledgeable in the methods of DI and I would be able to stand up and defend my position and my practices that would best benefit my students.

Reflections on Content Area Instruction

In the field of Special Education there are several areas that can cause concern for teachers with content areas. Those content areas include Science, Math and Social Science. In my field of study, Social Science, there are numerous challenges that students can struggle with including background knowledge, vocabulary and writing skills. To be successful within the social science content area students need a lot of assistance and structure provided by the teacher(s), especially when students have mild disabilities.

Collaboration is often a part of the everyday curriculum in most public schools, so it is important based on IDEA that teachers are highly qualified within the content area. In several schools that I have worked in teachers were paired based on their qualifications to teacher, which usually means that one teacher was highly qualified in the content area and the other was highly qualified to teach students with disabilities. This combination has the best chance to allow students to learn and grow as students in the content area, which in this case is social science. The teacher specialized in social science can bring the needs for background knowledge of the topics, vocabulary from the subjects, and the types of writing that influence the social science areas. The teacher specialized to teach students with disabilities is then challenged to create and adapt ways to engage, challenge and teach students by structuring their background knowledge, building vocabulary and scaffolding their writing techniques and styles.

Background knowledge is one of the toughest challenges for teachers and students in today’s classrooms. Throw in the need to assist students’ with disabilities and you have a very interesting and challenging situation. Confronted with an array of sources and information, historians must summarize, synthesize, and connect what they have learned to their own prior knowledge and what others have concluded (De La Paz, Morales, & Winston, 2007). There are many ways to assist with teaching background knowledge, but they can only be successful if the teacher is willing to take the time to teach those methods. Many of today’s teachers are rushed to teach to the standardized tests and thus feel there is not enough time to be able to teach the background knowledge that is needed to help their students learn. Prediction Guides, Carousel Walk, and Free Discussion are several ways to assess student background knowledge within the classroom. Textbook Scavenger Hunts, Picture Books, and Virtual Learning and Field Trips are all methods that can build background knowledge for students, especially those students who have learning disabilities.

Vocabulary is another challenge in teaching social science, however, this challenge is very closely related to building background knowledge. It is very important that students’ build a vast vocabulary within and outside the content area to be able to read with fluency. Even when students with disabilities are fully capable of understanding textbooks and resources in social studies, their literacy skills lag behind their verbal reasoning skills because of their difficulty in decoding the technical terms and vocabulary in the conceptually-dense historical material (De La Paz & MacArthur, 2003; Harniss, Dickson, Kinder, & Hollenbeck, 2001). For students who struggle with reading, writing and comprehension it is very important that they are able to build vocabulary development that encompasses a speaking/listening vocabulary, as well as a reading/writing vocabulary. By creating these types of partnerships in their learning of the content area subject matter, students will be able to expand their comprehension of the said subject matter and become more efficient in the learning and understanding. ABC Graffiti, Word Collections, and Four-Fold Concept Development are just a few of the strategies that can be useful in developing student vocabulary within social science learning.

Writing Skills in social science is considered a process and over the years there has been a debate as to “how to teach” writing to students in social science. With the creation of the Common Core Standards, there has been more emphasis placed on the process of writing than ever before. Students are now encouraged to write from their perspective and include a balanced approach to writing that will prepare them for college acceptance, rather than a specific piece that signifies specific knowledge. As shown by Wineburg (1991),  especially important in constructing a balanced account of a historical event, historians must analyze the multiple perspectives and viewpoints of the central participants. Some of the methods and strategies to build writing skills in social science include: GIST, Learning Logs, Cornell-Notes, QAR, Quick Writes, RAFT, Reading Response Journals, Thinking Maps, and Word Bank Writings. There are also numerous strategies and methods to teach writing perspectives that are important to social science writings. These new writing skills and methods can be build by blending the three challenges presented in this post. As teacher in social science, being able to create and build background through vocabulary and reading, students can begin to develop more complex and robust writing skills that can demonstrate stronger understanding and comprehension of subject matter.

If all of this can become a successful relationship and work in unison then there is a real chance that students can become very successful within a content area, especially social science. The three challenges presented in the social science content area are three challenges that have the ability to build upon each other and can demonstrate a real learning potential for students, especially those who have learning disabilities. Building skills is teaching, so all of the methods and strategies that are presented in this post benefit all students, not merely those with learning challenges. Great teachers use great teaching methods.