Monday Mustang Memo: August 2015

Excellence in Education : Note Taking and Summarization

Within the last week, I’ve witnessed tons of research-proven note taking strategies from Cornell Notes to Guided Notes to Summarization to Guided Notes. As we prepare our students for academic success and college, note taking and summarizing are vital skills for our students to master and the aforementioned strategies teach students that simply listening and taking notes during class isn’t nearly as effective.

Some of the research-supported instructional strategies, I observed included:

Modeling and providing students with samples (especially important at the beginning of the year)

Allowing students to personalize their notes (the smaller column in the Cornell notes, interacting with guided notes)
Using graphic organizers during and/or after note taking (in the classes I observed, these were provided to the students, but I imagine as students become more familiar and grow their expertise, you can provide them with choices and eventually students can/should create their own graphic organizers)
Quick summarization strategies (complete a summary within a defined space--so important to limit students so that they only “pull out” the most important information and giving students the opportunity to work in pairs to summarize)

I applaud all of you for teaching the proper skills of summarizing and note taking! By teaching these skills, students leave your class with a stronger foundation for learning in your class and all of their classes.

Idea for Education : HSTRY Timelines

Well for most of my educational career, I was a history teacher so I’m always on the lookout for great history sources and this is one of my favorites. HSTRY is a free timeline maker so in addition to the obvious uses in history classes, it has other uses as well. It could be used by students to introduce themselves to their classmates (saw several different approaches to this the first week), in English class it could be used for plot summarization, in science class it could be used to describe various cycles, or in any class it could be part of a research project. From a teacher-perspective, it could be used to flip instruction, for review, and for enhancement.

Things I love about hstry.co

Questions or quizzes can be embedded into the timeline as checks for understanding
As a teacher you can create a classroom and share the code with your students, so that you can easily find all their timelines and they can find yours
Students can comment on timelines from their class (and you have the ability to edit/delete these)
It’s easy to upload pictures from your computer or the web
You can add audio or video (YouTube) easily
It seems to work on most internet devices
Timelines automatically save
Intuitive and easy to use but they also have plenty of explanatory youtube videos

Check out some of the student and teacher created timelines

Weekly Shout Out

Great job by Mr. Trent for organizing the College Culture and Pride Day on Friday.

Thanks to Ms. Weaver for organizing our Mustang Mornings and getting the labels to us and to all the teachers who “drafted” students to ensure they reach their potential.

Need To Knows

Mustang Morning begins Monday, August 31.

Calendar Items

Tuesday, September 1: Fire Drill (1st Period)

September 4: Pep Rally

8:55-9:30	1 A
9:35-10:14	1 B
10:19-10:49	Mustang Morning
10:54-12:39	2nd Period 1st Lunch: 10:54-11:24 2nd Lunch: 11:30-12:00 3rd Lunch: 12:09-12:39
10:54-11:34	2 A
11:39-12:09	2 B
12:44-1:15	3 A
1:20-1:53	3 B
1:58-2:30	4 A
2:35-3:07	4 B
3:07-3:50	Pep Rally