Guided Notes: Improving The Effectiveness Of Your Lectures

        In my last blog, I introduced you to  the CAST: Teaching Every Student website. As a reminder, this website helps teachers put UDL information and knowledge into action in the classroom! During this blog post I am going to introduce you to guided notes, what they are, how you can implement them into your classroom and why they would be beneficial! 
       When discussing a topic, a commonly-used way to present new information is through the use of lectures. Educators have been debating the use of lectures as a mean of providing information to their students...

Here are some advantages of using lectures in your classroom: 

 • "Lecturing is an efficient use of the instructor’s time. A good lecture can be presented from one semester to the next,

reducing subsequent planning and preparation time to review and update".

 • "Lecturing is versatile. It can be used with large or small groups, for any curriculum area, and can last from a few

minutes to several hours".

 • "The instructor has complete control of course content. When lecturing, the instructor has complete control over the

level of detail and degree of emphasis with which course content is covered".

(Heward).

Here are some disadvantages of using lectures in your classroom:

 • "Course content is often presented via lecture in unorganized and uneven fashion. This makes it difficult for students to determine the most important aspects of the lecture (i.e., What’s going to be on the exam?)".

 • "Students can be passive observers. The typical lecture does not require students to actively participate. One of the most consistent and important educational research findings is that students who make frequent, relevant responses during a lesson learn more than students who are passive observers"

 • "The listening, language, and/or motor skill deficits of some students with disabilities make it difficult for them

to identify important lecture content and write it down correctly and quickly enough during a lecture. While writing one concept in his notebook, the student with learning disabilities might miss the next two points".

(Heward).

What are guided notes? 

 "Guided notes are instructor-prepared handouts that provide all students with background information and standard cues with specific spaces to write key facts, concepts, and/or relationships during the lecture. Guided notes (GN) require students to actively respond during the lecture, improve the accuracy and efficiency of students’ notetaking, and increase students’ retention of course content" (Heward).


Since I had always been someone who felt negatively towards lectures, it was nice to learn that there was a new strategy, guided notes, to help make lectures more interactive for the students! I am a big supporter of actively involving students in their learning because I think in general, people learn more when they are actively involved. That being said, I think students would definitely get more out of lectures by using guided notes! 

Why should you use guided notes? 

1) Students produce complete and accurate notes.

2) Guided notes increases student's active engagement with course content.

3)  Guided Notes help instructors prioritize and limit lecture content.

Implementing Guided Notes Into The Special Education Classroom:

1) Eliminate the need for generality as much as possible: prioritize the settings the learner will most often function and prioritize the knowledge and skills that will be required most of the learner.  The most important skill-setting combinations should always be taught directly.

2) Probe for generalized outcomes before, during and after instruction.   Generalization probes can often be made more efficient by contriving meaningful opportunities for the learner to use his or her new knowledge or skill.

I loved learning how I could take the concept of guided notes and implement it into the special education classroom! Since I do not have much experience with students with special needs, I always appreciate learning different ways and techniques to help them learn using a technique used in the regular education classroom, like guided notes! 

Here is a short video on how a teacher used guided notes in her classroom:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30SXYfQmicw. 

Heward, W,.L. Guided Notes: Improving The Effectiveness Of Your Lectures. (n.d.) Retrieved from: http://ada.osu.edu/resources/fastfacts/Guided-Notes-Fact-Sheet.pdf. 

CAST: Teaching Every Student

In my last blog post, I talked about the PAL Toolkit, a tool to help educators plan UDL lessons that are aligned to state standards! In this blog post, I am going to be talking about the CAST: Teaching Every Student website! The purpose of this website is to support "educators in learning about and practicing Universal Design For Learning (UDL)"(CAST(. In addition to using the PAL Toolkit to help educators create lessons and units involving UDL, an educator could use the additional support of this website to help them learn how to practice using UDL in their classroom!

This website would be a fabulous reference for an educator! The Cast: Teaching Every Student website introduces those who are unfamiliar with UDL, to what UDL is. It also provides an educator with numerous tools they could use to help make materials for their class to help engage all learners and provides learners multiple forms of reading books! Additionally, after an educator used the PAL Toolkit to produce lessons and units, they could use this website to help them check to see if they have a UDL "rich" curriculum and to help them identify any barriers in the materials they decided to use to teach their class.


Getting To Know The UDL Way: 
 This part of the website was really intriguing. This activity reminded me of how closely the principles of UDL are linked to the three domains of the brain. I had mentioned previously in my blog how great I thought this concept was, since we use our brain to do everything! The "Getting To Know You" activity stressed the fact that we use our brain to do all tasks. This activity allowed us to pick a task we might do, like cooking an Indian dinner. I first had to think about what background and skills I would bring to cooking an Indian dinner, next, using my recognition, strategy and affective networks, I had to list my strengths and challenges I would come across when making an Indian dinner.

This activity really got me thinking about struggling student's I have worked with.  This activity taught me that no matter what skill we might be working on in the classroom, that if I try to tap into these student's strengths and interests, and relate them to the activity, it might just "outweigh" their challenges! 

Goal:	Cook an Indian Meal for a Group of Friends
Individual:	You
Your background, skills, and interests:

NETWORK	Strengths	Challenges
Recognition
Strategy
Affect

If you'd like to watch a video that explains more about UDL or diverse learners, click the following link: http://lessonbuilder.cast.org/window.php?src=videos

CAST. CAST: Teaching Every Student. Retrieved from: http://www.cast.org/teachingeverystudent/

UDL Toolkits: Teaching Every Student

In my last blog post, I talked about how closely the principles of UDL are connected to the three main domains of the brain! This discovery was wonderful, since it is the brain that we use to help us think and learn! In this blog post, I am going to be introducing you to the PAL toolkit and how it can help a teacher when planning a UDL lesson! 

The purpose of Planning for All Learners or (PAL) is to help educators apply UDL to their daily lessons to help promote engagement and learning. The PAL Toolkit provides "specific planning steps, guidance, mentoring, model lessons, tools, templates, resources, and links to other educators using the PAL Model" (CAST). 

The PAL Toolkit includes:

• Procedures: This section provides the teacher with the steps to designing a UDL lesson. The PAL toolkit suggests that a teacher first sets the goals, analyzes the status (identify methods, materials and assessment), apply UDL and then teach UDL lesson.
• Examples: The PAL Toolkit includes the teacher with sample units and lessons that provide examples of UDL.
• Resources: Where PAL got their information.
• Share: How one could share information that they've learned or talk to other people who have used the PAL toolkit.

The PAL Toolkit Procedure

Implementing the PAL Toolkit into a classroom: 

•     With the procedure part of the PAL toolkit, they provide you with the UDL Goal Setter Tutorial. This tutorial, " steps you through the process of analyzing learning standards and benchmarks through the lens of UDL. Using a selected set of standards and benchmarks, the tutorial helps you learn to analyze what is essential to a goal and what can be changed and varied to support different learners"(CAST). With the help of this tutorial, any teacher would not only be able to implement UDL into their lesson plan, but also make sure that the lesson is still aligned with state standards, which is extremely important!
• Models are useful no matter how old you are! Using the examples that the PAL toolkit provides of units and lessons will be a great model for other teachers to use to help them make their own units and lessons!

CAST. UDL Toolkits Planning For All Learners (PAL). Retrieved from: http://www.cast.org/teachingeverystudent/toolkits/tk_introduction.cfm?tk_id=21

CAST: About UDL

In my last blog post, I introduced you to the concept and principles of UDL. In this blog post, I am going to explain to you why it is necessary to include UDL in your daily lesson plans. As many educators have been in the field for numerous years, they may not find it in their best interest to change their lesson plans to meet the UDL format. However, in this blog post, I hope to convince all the veteran educators and pre-educators that it is extremely necessary and beneficial to make all of your lesson plan fit the UDL format.

From reading the CAST website, I learned that Neuroscience comes into play when we think about the various needs, skills and interests of the learners in our classroom. 

There are three primary brain networks that come into play:

• Recognition Networks: "How we gather facts and categorize what we see, hear, and read"(CAST).
• Strategic Networks: "How we organize and express our ideas"(CAST).
• Affective Network: "How learners get engaged and stay motivated" (CAST).



Recognition Networks



Strategic Networks

Affective Networks

I think it's great that the UDL principles are connected to the primary brain networks, since that's what students use to think! 

The CAST website even provides educators with additional things they can do in their classroom to benefit each network! Some of the suggestions I liked were:

• Recognition Networks: For auditory learners a teacher could "Provide written transcripts for videos or auditory clips" (CAST).
• Strategic Networks: Teachers can have the students "Use physical manipulatives (e.g., blocks, 3D models, base-ten blocks)"(CAST).
• Affective Networks: Teachers can provide the students with multiple tools for composition, like providing the student's with "sentence starters or sentence strips"(CAST).
   

For more ideas visit the CAST website! 

CAST: About UDL. (2012). Retrieved from: http://www.cast.org/udl/index.html

Wiki Site

In my Assistive Technology class, we have been talking about how to make learning accessible to all different types of learners. This blog post is going to inform you all about Universal Design of Learning (UDL).  The purpose of UDL is that it "helps meet the challenge of diversity by suggesting flexible instructional materials, techniques and strategies that empower educators to meet those varied needs" (Universal Design For Learning).

The three principles of UDL are:

•            Multiple Means of Representation: Providing students with multiple ways of representing work.
•           Multiple Means Of Expression: Allowing student's to express what they know in different ways.
•           Multiple Means of Engagement: Providing the student's with different ways to engage and motive them to learn.

The Wiki Site provides educators with ways that they can incorporate the three principles of UDL into their daily lessons so that it meets the needs of all learners, including those with disabilities. As a pre-educator who has not had much interaction with students with disabilities, it was truly a relief to learn that with the help of UDL, it's actually really simple to help meet the needs of students with disabilities in your classroom. 

•           Multiple Means of Representation- Provide visuals like pictures for visual learners.
•           Multiple Means of Expression- Allow students to choose whether they want to tell you what they know orally or by writing it down. Allow students who struggle with writing to use a talking word processor or onscreen keyboard!
•           Multiple Means Of Engagement- Teachers should provide students with choices in things such as rewards Using technology such as blogging, E-books or voicethreads may also be a great way to help engage and motivate your students to learn!

Universal Design For Learning. (n.d.) Retrieved from:  http://udl.wiki.ciu20.org/home.