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Teacher Resources for ERLI
Note-Taking: Identifying Headings & Sub-headings
In shaping their notes, we ask students to organize the information from the lecture into topics/headings, sub-topics/sub-headings, and supports [details & examples], but just how can students identify the headings/sub-headings and distinguish them from supports? Even high-intermediate students will often write down a lot of details in their notes, but completely miss the heading/sub-headings that help organize that information.
- Prepare a lecture of your own, and a set of notes for that lecture. You can make these notes from a lecture in the textbook or from one of your own. Everyone has certain topics/areas that they know a lot about, and can explain to a set of students in the form of a lecture. Regardless of where you get the material from, make sure the notes follow a clear organization with headings, sub-heading, and smaller supporting examples and details.
- Give students a blank outline of the lecture notes to help them follow along.
- Give the lecture as usual, but omit the main topics and sub-topics. Just give the smaller supporting points and examples.
- After finishing the lecture, divide the students into pairs and ask them to fill in the missing topics/sub-topics based on the supporting examples. Walk around and guide students with questions as needed, but try to let them figure out as much as they can on their own.
- After the pair-work time, go over the answers for the missing info together. For each response, be sure to ask why the student chose that as the heading/sub-heading. The goal is for them to be able to use the supporting details/examples to identify the heading/sub-heading. This is a similar process to using the supports to find the main idea in a reading passage.
Note: *The complexity of the supporting details and examples can increase as the class level increases.
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