INDEPENDENT LEARNING – ‘NOTE MAKING’ NOT ‘NOTE TAKING’

Every week, the Secondary teaching community shares interesting articles about teaching. It’s a great way to always keep at the forefront of what makes good practice, and it’s also fascinating to see what colleagues are excited about!

Last week, we read an article on the importance of students making effective notes. I enjoyed reading the article so much I thought you might too. It’s called ‘Spatial Awareness – Taking Advantage of your Lazy Brain’. It starts with a funny story about making tea, so it naturally appealed to me, being British!

The article makes the point that students need to own their own learning. They need to develop strategies that work for them. Mere ‘note taking’ literally jotting down the important things their teachers tell them makes for passive learning. This is not a particularly effective way for students to learn. Instead, they need to engage in ‘note making’, where they will synthesise the information, organizing it in a way that helps them to make links between topics to understand them better. This might involve using different colours, charts and images.

Last year, the Sec 4s were lucky enough to take part in a workshop given by a visiting learning specialist from the UK, Louise Lasky. Ms Lasky showed them how to organize data through mind-mapping techniques, and it has been heartening to see students take this skill into the Junior College.

So much of a child’s learning happens outside of the classroom. At SIS-PIK we want to help our students become confident independent learners, ready for whatever the world throws at them! Note making techniques are one example of how students can take ownership of how they learn.

Dr Dan