But there was one thing I was afraid to try until this year. It's a concept known as Retrieval Taking. Rather than taking notes during class, students summarize the class at the end. The research on this is compelling. Students who summarized after learning performed 12 % better on a post-lecture exam than those who took notes during class. But I was hesitant. What if it doesn't work? How do I tell parents that I told their students not to take notes in class?
For the past two years, I have had a lot of individual meetings with students. If they don't do well on a test, I send them a note to come see me during lunch or study hall. We talk about their study methods, and I give them advice on how they might revise them to be more effective. Then, I looked at their notes. What I found was that the students who were the very best at note-taking were still really bad at note-taking. They either had what I had projected on the wall and nothing else or they had attempted to take down every word verbatim. Neither of those methods is helpful, so I thought I would teach them to take better notes. That didn't work because change is uncomfortable, so, if I wasn't going to collect their notes and grade them (and I wasn't), they would just go back to what they were comfortable with after about a week. Their computers were also an issue. While I am totally supportive of our one-to-one program, students do an awful lot of shopping and game-playing that is difficult to manage as a teacher. One of the purposes of note-taking is to maintain student engagement in class, and that was kind of a wash if they were taking them on their computers.
At last year's Learning and the Brain conference, I was in a session with John Almarode. He gets you to stand up and walk away from your table and find a partner; as a result, I am nowhere near my computer for over 20 minutes. He is intentionally trying to keep us from taking notes. After the session, I was joking with him and said, "Well, I am going back to the hotel room and writing up these notes, and you can't stop me." He laughed and said, "Yeah, that's what you should do. That's what students should do; it's just that they won't."
So, I found myself at a tipping point where I thought it was time to attempt this method of note-taking. Also, between the textbook that perfectly matches my class and the many videos I have made, the students have plenty to study if this doesn't work. At parent orientation, I introduced this idea to parents, a little worried about what their response would be. It was overwhelmingly positive and hopeful. The only concern one parent had was "What if my daughter wants to take notes." I replied that if she was taking them on paper, I would not take the pen from her hand, but she would not be allowed to do it on her computer, and I would not wait for her to write. He seemed satisfied with that. So, here is what I have been doing.
First, I needed something to keep student attention and engagement in class. There are mini-whiteboards and markers on every desk (thank you Craig Barton for so much advice for their use on your podcast and Zane Smitley for spending two years doing this so well while I observed you). I ask frequent questions in class anyway, so rather than calling on a student with their hand raised, I now get an answer from every student on their whiteboards (I may need to buy stock in the Expo company). I am realizing that I need to ask a lot more questions because when there is a large gap between them, students are starting to drift; but I'm working on that. Second, I stop whenever the part of the class that is primarily me speaking and say "Go back to GoFormative for the notes summary." They begin almost every class on that platform for their bellwork, so it made sense to use it for the summaries as well. When they go there, I have put in several questions that I would hope notes would have answered if they had been taking them. I based that on the advice from this blog post by my friend Andrew Watson from the Learning and Brain website.
It's a little too soon to know how this going. As far as classroom practices go, it seems to be going very well. But, is it helping them learn? It's too soon to tell. They did perform exceptionally well on their first test, but the material on the first test isn't very hard. I may not be able to make meaningful comparisons between this year and other years until tests two and three, when I traditionally see a drop in performance. (Yes, I know performance and learning are not the same thing, but for the moment, it's the only metric I have.) At this point, I can say for certain that it has not harmed their performance on the first test, but I'll keep you updated as the year goes on.
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