Ideas for Note Taking

Like cats, young people are curious. Design motivating activities that engage learners in meaningful tasks.

Let's explore two online tools for note taking. Use the PDF files to see how the tools might be used in teaching and learning.

• NoteStar - NoteStar Directions (PDF)
• Diigo - Diigo Directions (PDF)

Consider the following two examples for projects.

Elementary Example

Scholastic Junior Reporter Assignment The article archives at Scholastic is getting old. They want to update some of their articles. Your job is to take notes and create a new article for our Junior Reporter wiki. Follow these steps: Set up your NoteStar account following the NoteStar handout. Read an article from the Scholastic Article Archive. Take notes about this article. Read additional articles from Scholastic. Or, find your own articles and books. Take notes using NoteCard on at least two online articles. Take notes using NoteCard on at least one book. Write your teacher a NoteStar message when your NoteCards are done. Write your own article for Scholastic about your topic.

Middle/High School Example

Powerful Poems Some poems leave a lasting impression on the reader. Which poems do you find particularly powerful? What poetry approaches and techniques are used? Why? What do you find interesting about the poems? How do they connect with your thoughts or life? Your Mission: Share Powerful Poems with your Peers Follow these steps: Explore poems at http://poets.org Bookmark at least three poems using the Diigo tools. Be sure to share with the group. Annotate these poems using the Highlight and Comment tool. Be sure to share with the group. Use the Send tab to Get Annoted Link and use it in your assignment. After taking notes on the poems, use the Send tab to Extract Annotations and write about your favorite poem.  Go to the class Group and post your poem entry as a Reply in the Powerful Poems class forum.

Scaffold Inquiry

Think about unique tools that will attract young people to reference materials such as visual tools.

• Visual Thesaurus
• VisuWords
• Lightweight Visual Thesaurus.
• Visual Dictionary Online
• VocabAhead

Use Visual Thesaurus, VisuWords, and Lightweight Visual Thesaurus to search for a word such as creative, imaginative, or innovative. Think about how you might use this tools in your classroom.

Provide young people with lots of practice using pre-selected websites. This allows students to focus on the key ideas. Then, ask students to develop questions and use note taking to address questions.

When selecting websites for use with online notetakers:

• Select databases and other websites with individuals records or sets of information such as Enature FieldGuides
• Choose short articles from blogs, encyclopedia, wikis.
• Use websites with text work best.
• Avoid websites such as Google Books that are difficult to bookmark and annotate.
• Avoid websites written with Flash or those with slide shows or animation are difficult to use.

Go to the Focus on Inquiry page. Use these materials to develop your own activity related to wolves.

Explore Resources

Explore the following resources, select one, and design your own notetaking activity.

Some students have trouble reading pages, consider using Readability with some of the following resources. Add the button to your Favorites. Find a page to read and select the Readbility option from Favorites.

See websites that provide interactive experiences in note-taking:

• Weather and Painting

Elementary Suggestions

• Archeology for Kids
• Ben's Guide to US Government
• Biographical Information
  • George Washington Carver
• Butterflies and Moths of North America
• Especies Fact Sheets
• KidsHealth
• Kids in the House
• Great Plant Escape
• Naturescapes
• Ology Big Ideas - Archaeology, Astronomy, Biodiversity, Earth, Genetics, Marine Biology, Paleontology, Water
• Blogs and News
  • EcoKids
  • Earth and Sky
  • Science News for Kids
  • Scholastic News
  • Why Files
• Periodicals
  • Highlights Kids
  • National Geographic Little Kids
  • NWF Green Hour Archives
• San Diego Zoo Recipes for Kids
• Scott Foresman Science

Middle/High School Suggestions

• Bigraphical Information
  • Nobel Prize
• CNet - consumer information
• Fact Check
• idebate
• Occupational Outlook Handbook
• Oyez - Basics of Supreme Court Cases
• Blogs and News
  • Climate Change Blog
  • Nature News
  • Weekly Reader Blog
  • Science Daily
  • OpEd News
• Periodicals
  • National Geographic
  • Smithsonian

For other great sources of nonfiction reading, go to my online workshop Straight from the Horse's Mouth: Nonfiction, Technology and Information Fluent Thinkers.

Strategies

Consider some practical activities for notetaking in the digital age.

• Use guiding questions and focus on high level thinking
• Encourage notes, not copying
• Use notetaking tools as an alternative to worksheets
• Share notes among groups of students for collaborative projects

Resources

Notemaking from English Companion

Big 6 Resources

• Ideas About Note Taking and Citing Sources
• Reading for Information: The Trash and Teasure Method from Big 6
• Taking Notes: It's not Rocket Science from Big6
• Note-Taking from Big 6

Thinkfinity - do a keyword search for note taking