Cornell+Note-Taking

=Strategy Name: Cornell Note-Taking = 

Strategy Description:
Cornell Note-Taking (called T-Notes in my building)is a graphic organizer. It is a flexible strategy that can be adapted to fit a variety of reading needs. The strategy helps students understand and remember what they read. It also helps students make connections, develop questions, focus and monitor their reading, and analyze what they learned. Cornell Note-Taking can be used as pre-reading strategy and as a during reading strategy.

**Course: **
•7th grade Applied Communications— a 9 week writing class that all 7th and 8th graders take as part of their Fine/Applied Arts rotation. •5 classes of 28-30 students •Classes include special educations students with IEP written expression and reading comprehension goals. Classes also include regular education students, English Language Learners, and gifted students.

Rationale:
•As 7th graders, reading and comprehending informational text is increasingly important. Cornell Note-Taking can be a tool to help students comprehend informational text. •Our building models and practices 1-2 reading strategies a quarter—across all grade levels, across all curriculums. Cornell Note-Taking was a strategy from 1st Quarter and I feel it is important to continue to revisit these strategies so the students can make them their own. •Cornell Note-Taking (with student created questions) will help teach what good readers do. •Cornell Note-Taking (with student created questions) will create investment and engagement in their reading—active reading. •Through an informal assessment (a previous assignment), I found note taking is a weakness for many of these students. •Questioning is a reading strategy being taught in their Language Arts classes this quarter. •The Cornell Note-Taking will provide the necessary notes when these students write a Bio Poem and an informational paragraph (upcoming assignments).
 * I choose this strategy for these students for several reasons: **

Diverse Learners:
 For my students who struggle with comprehension, this strategy went well because they felt supported. I think my strong readers may have been a little frustrated with the slower pace during the modeling, but they were active participants in the discussions. Auditory and visual learners responded well to this strategy as we discussed and took notes on the smart board. Kinesthetic learners were probably the most frustrated.

**Procedure: **
Basics of Cornell Notes for this lesson: Students create questions they think will be answered in the reading and record them in the left column. Next, the students read the selection and use the right column to record the answers to these questions as they find them in the reading. Students use the bottom to write a 1-2 sentence summary of the selection. 1.I reminded the students of Cornell Note-Taking and we had a brief discussion about Cornell Note-Taking and how they had used them in the past. 2.I explained the goals for the lesson—read a brief biography of an activist, take notes on the graphic organizer, use the notes (notes only, no article) to write a Bio-Poem and an informational paragraph about the activist. 3.I modeled Cornell Note-Taking at the smart board while they took notes at their seats. As a class, we came up with good questions and then we read an article on Craig Kielburger—a young activist for children’s rights. As we found answers to our questions, we recorded them on the right hand side of the graphic organizer. 4.The next day, the students created their own Cornell Note-Taking questions for an activist biography they would read by themselves. Students had the option of using the same questions we created as a class or changing them. 5.The students read and recorded their answers on the right hand side of the chart.

**Potential Issues:**
I think it went really well in almost all of my classes. Students were engaged as we created good questions. I was impressed with their level of questioning. There were a lot of hands in the air. The students were also very engaged when we read to answer the questions. There was a clear purpose to our reading. I had one class (7th hour, almost the end of the day, 1/3 of the class IEP students, several behavior issues) that struggled to create good, meaningful questions. I had to take more control of the process. In addition, to support kinesthetic learners I could let students come to the smart board to record their suggested questions.

References/Materials:

 * **Strategy adapted from:** Allen, J. (2004). //Tools for teaching content literacy//. Portland, ME: Stenhouse.

In binder: **
 * <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS', cursive;">
 * 1) <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS', cursive; background-color: #ffff00;">Blank t-chart
 * 2) <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS', cursive; background-color: #ffff00;">T-Notes on an activist ||