amanda conrad post 1

I saw for the first time a couple of days ago how the teacher I am working with likes to have her students take notes. I saw this before while I was in her class and it actually wasn’t that bad, but the second time she had her kids take notes was awful. I guess she does this all of the time too, which makes me feel sorry for the kids. At first I thought it was a joke, I didn’t know what to think about her process. To me, it is so off the wall and I know for a fact that none of the kids get anything from it. I’m telling you, this lady is a little crazy. From what I have observed she has not taught them how to properly take notes, so obviously they aren’t good at it and it is very clear that the students hate taking notes. They always groan and complain any time they have to take notes, and they are always concerned about how many pages it will be.
Okay so I walk into the classroom and sit down for some observation, and the teacher tells me that they will be taking notes today. Immediately the kids start asking how many pages it will be and the teacher assures them that it is short. Anyway, they all get out their notebooks and she simply turns on the overhead and puts a one page typed paper up and tells the kids to start copying! That’s it! Then she went to her desk and started doing something on the computer. Now, tell me if I’m crazy but is that not the worst possible way you can make your students take notes? I wanted to shove Marzano in her hands and make her read it, or tell her how I would like to do things. She gave no instruction, no explanation, no anything…just put the paper up and said start copying. Hopefully I can try to be a little more engaging when I have the students take notes, and hopefully I can teach them a little bit on how to properly take notes. Maybe the teacher will learn something from me?! Who knows…wish me luck!