Wes Neal 1st Post: Notetaking

I am in a dual credit biology class consisting mainly of 11th and 12th graders. Right after I began my clinical, I was presented with the strategy we had just covered that week in class; the issue of whether to provide students with a full set of notes or not. The teacher I work with has been teaching high school biology for over 30 years, and this class in particular for 20, and he says he is constantly experimenting with better ways to teach students. He believes in handing out a set of notes from his PowerPoint presentations for each section he covers. He has found that this not only saves time because he doe not have to wait on students to finish copying notes, but it also encourages more discussion on the students' part. This is due to the fact that they are not feverishly taking notes, so they are able to actually think about what has just been said and formulate questions they may have, or answer questions posed by the teacher. It is also very useful when students may miss class, because when they come back, they are given a full set of notes that they can be sure contain all of the important points. The teacher also doesn't have to worry about whether or not all students can see the projector screen since they have the slides right in front of them. He does acknowledge that of course some students do not pay attention since they don't have to worry about actually taking their own notes, but many of these students probably would not take good notes in the first place. For the other students who always pay attention, it allows them more time to write down clarification points or questions they may have instead of trying to simply copy what is being shown.