Chapter 7: Note taking and note making

I enjoyed reading chapter 7 just for the simple fact that I never actually learned how to take good notes. I learned a lot from this chapter about how to take good notes as a student and how to teach in such a way that it is easy to take notes. As an educator, it is important that I organize my notes in such a way that my students will be able to pick up on the flow and pattern of my lesson and can easily and effectively take notes as I teach. It is also important to stay focused on the important topics of the lesson and not get caught up on a portion of the lesson that is not as important as a lot of my past teachers were famous for. By making small comments like, "this is important", I will be able to help my students in the note taking process. In addition, I now realize that note taking is not something you should expect your students know how to do but it must be taught. Students need to actually experience instructional time on how to take effective and organized notes. If a teacher spends a little time in the beginning of the school year or semester to teach note taking then the students will learn more in the long run. I personally wish that I would have been able to have a lesson on how to take notes when I was in high school. It could have saved me a lot of unnecessary study time.

I also enjoyed that the text discussed note taking versus note making. I never really paid attention to the fact that there is actually a difference between the two. Note taking refers to the notes one takes when hearing a lecture or presentation whereas note making is when one takes notes while reading or studying a text or other writings. I was even worse at note making than I was at note taking when I was in high school. I would grab a highlighter and practically highlight whole pages of a text. It is important to point out to your students that this is ineffective. Students need to learn how to pull out the really important aspects of a text and not get so consumed by some of the smaller sub points. Again, I wish that someone would have taught me how to be a good note maker in school so I intend on spending some time teaching my students how to take and make good notes.

Chapter's 1 and 8

Upon reading chapter 1, I was reminded of all that I learned last semester. Dr. Boyce taught us almost all of the topics in chapter one, focusing mainly on comprehension.  It is useless for students to read if they are not going to comprehend what they read, and chapter 1 is full of various strategies on how to improve comprehension in the classroom. The strategy that I enjoyed reading about most was probably reciprocal teaching. I feel that this method would be a fun and easy way to improve comprehension in the classroom and is a method that could easily be taught and implemented into every reading assignment in any subject. Reciprocal teaching allows students to become independent learners by teaching them to ask questions, clarify concepts, summarize what they read, and make predictions or inferences as they read. Reciprocal teaching is one of many strategies that will improve students' reading comprehension in all subject areas whether reading narrative or expository texts.

Chapter 8 was about writing to learn. Writing to learn is not the same thing as learning to write. Focusing on learning to write uses process writing as an instructional approach. Learning to write uses three different kinds of knowledge (declarative, procedural, and conditional) which ask the questions "what?", "how?", and "when or why?". Just as there are many strategies to comprehend reading, there are also many strategies to being a good writer. The topic in this chapter that interested me most was the "Using Writing Prompts" section. I can remember using writing prompts in high school as reflections to assignments or lectures that had been done in the past. There are many different types of activities that can be used to make writing prompts fun and exciting but also very effective. Overall, chapter 8 covered some great topics on how to improve writing in the classroom and there are several strategies that I will use in my classroom.

Content and Learning to Learn-Blog #3

I really enjoyed reading this article and learning about the importance of not only teaching content to students, but also teaching students how to learn on their own. Once a student is comfortable and confident enough to begin teaching themselves then they are going to have a much less stressful academic career. We are future educators are always being taught how important the content of a subject is, but I am just now learning how important it is for students to actually become independent learners. I wish so badly that my teachers would have taught me in this way when I was young. I feel that I would like school much better now and would be much more stress free. Another thing I really liked about this article is that it emphasized allowing students to read more expository text in the classroom. There are many expository texts that I know students would be intrigued by if they were to be introduced to them. These types of books make learning a fun experience and allow the students to become more independent in their learning. Overall, I think that this article holds a wealth of truthful knowledge on how to educate our students today and I look forward to implementing this into my classroom.

Learning about peers and Writing to Learn

I chose to read the blogs of the beautiful Sarah Dosda and the marvelous Lacey Garrett. I learned that both of these amazing, Godly women are wonderful mothers and will be spectacular teachers very soon! I wanted to read about these women because I look up to them. They juggle the MANY stresses of school with maintaining their duties as wives and mothers at home. They seem like really strong women and I hope that I can take some of the things I have learned from them and apply them to my life now and in the future.

I surprisingly enjoyed reading the “Writing to Learn” article. I have never been a student who enjoys writing, and I think it is because I have rarely ever been instructed to just write what I wanted to write in school. I liked the ideas of quick writes the most out of all of the activities the article mentioned. It is great to have students quickly write their ideas or feelings about an assignment or class discussion immediately after the activity is over. This will help students to digest all that they learned as well as helping them to remember what they learned. I wish that I would have been asked to write down my thoughts and opinions more in all the years I have attended school. I feel that I would have different views on writing now. I will remember this article when I become a teacher and will implement writing into all of the subjects that I teach.