note taking

In my history class I must do some lecuturing and the students will have to take notes. It is something that is going to happen. Although I try to make it as interactive, relavent, and exciting as I can I am going to have to do this. One of the most important aspects of this is the students' note taking abilities. They must be able to take effective notes. My teacher does not give the students a complete set of notes nor does he have them listen and write thier notes entirely from what they hear. He gives them an outline of the information that is goin to be covered. They are partial, broad notes. He is helping them with the note taking process. Like summerizing, when taking notes anyone must be able to tell what is important and what is not important. They have to be able to delete information and know what inoformation to keep. If he were to give them a more complete set of notes or even a complete set of notes, the students would be missing out on one of the most important benefits of note taking, critical thinking. Taking notes from someone talking or from something that is written down causes the student to think about the material in a manner which makes sense to them. The must be able to do this in order to take effective notes. If a teacher were to give a complete set of notes they would not have to do this. However, if the teacher were to not give the students anything, he would not be accomodating as many learning styles. The auditory learners and the read write learners would probably be fine. However the other learners may struggle to organize the information in a way that makes sense to them. By giving the students a starting point we are allowing them the opportunity to organize the information presented to them in their own way however, they have some help with what to keep and what to delete. Another thing my teacher does that I agree with is that he does not give out study guides. He will answer questions about things that may be on the test however there is no study guide. The students are supposed to use their notes as a study guide. By doing this he is ensuring that the students use their notes to study if they choose to study at all. If he were to give them a study guide, they would use it to study, instead of their own representation of the material they were presented with.