Honoring the Notetaker

As much as we encourage our students to take notes during class, some students just will not, no matter how many times you suggest it.  I do believe that although we should never stop trying to teach study skills, in the end, there is value in honoring personal choice and emphasizing personal responsibility.

However, often times we are focused on what our students don't do and don't take the time to recognize those who are employing techniques in a productive manner. This is one of the reasons why, occasionally, I will publish a student's notes on Moodle and Tweet the publication.

I also do this to demonstrate "model" note taking to other students and emphasize the importance of a particular lesson.

There is also something more populist and authentic about reading your classmate's notes rather than the teacher's lesson plan.

I'm including two examples. One is from after they received the results from a test with an in-class essay. Click here to see how it looked after Tweeting it. The other is from studying the characters in The Picture of Dorian Gray. There are some misspellings, but I didn't correct them, because I want students to see you don't need to write perfectly to take high quality notes.