Effective Math Class Note Taking Lesson Plan
Summary
Teach and assess effective math lecture note-taking skills.
Goals
- Instruct students in effective classroom note-taking skills.
- Instruct students in the specifics of math lecture note-taking.
- Provide students a baseline awareness of their existing note-taking skills.
Introduction and Discovery
5 min - Introduce Cornell two-column note-taking system:
- College math class story…
- Use is required and graded for the entire math course.
- There will be a quiz at the end of class (don’t say it will be an open-notes quiz).
- Quickly describe the Cornell two-column note-taking system using overhead, and provide a simple example.
- Instruct students to take notes using the Cornell system on the remainder of this lesson, and that those notes will be graded at the end of class.
15 min - Introduce effective math lecture note-taking skills:
- Model this note taking session.
- Follow notes exemplar.
- Sample questions:
- In what ways is taking notes in a math class different than a history class?
- What do you think it means to be an active listener?
- How can questions help you be an active listener?
- How do you know when you should notes on something?
- Who in the classroom gives you note-taking cues?
- What note-taking cues does the teacher give?
- What other cues can you watch for in the class?
- What types of things in math are especially important to take notes on?
- What are some things you could do in your notes to help you remember/note really important things?
- Now that you have taken notes, what good are they to you?
- Display good and poor note-taking examples.
10 min - Assessment
- Open-notes quiz, exemplar lecture notes handout use permitted.
Application
Group level student grading and review of lecture notes just taken:
- Break class up into dyads.
- DisplayEffective Math Lecture Note-Takingexemplar.
- Distribute and explain note-taking scoring rubric.
- Students review and grade their partner’s lecture notes.
- Each group lists the three things that worked as they took notes.
- Each group lists the three main problems they encountered taking notes.
Class level clarification and summarization:
- Groups share and class discusses what did/didn’t work when taking notes.
- Teacher clarifies and summarizes.
- Collect student graded scoring rubrics.
- Inform students that every class will start with:
- Grading/review of lecture notes from the prior day.
- Correcting/reviewing of homework.