Sunday, September 8, 2013

Improve Your Lectures Through Guided Notes

My last two posts focused on my first experience applying all of this new information we learned on UDL into one of my lesson plans. Although it was challenging at first, I pulled through and I'm sure my students will benefit from the extra time I put in for them all to be successful. During this post, I want to talk to you about a very teacher friendly resource about improving the effectiveness of your lectures through the use of guided notes. As teachers, we are always improving our education, especially when working with students with disabilities. Personally, I do not have much experience working with special education so I enjoyed learning about a technique I could use in the future.

Guided notes are teacher-prepared handouts that provide all students with background information and standard cues with specific space to write key facts or concepts during the lecture. 
There are many benefits to using guided notes including the students produce complete and accurate notes, increasing active engagement, serving as an advance organizer, and helping the teacher prioritize and limit lecture content. I know, it sounds like a great strategy doesn't it? Now the question is HOW. Constructing guided notes is easy, especially for a lecture that you already have developed. First you want to identify the important content students must learn from the lecture. Next, simply delete key facts and concepts from the lecture outline leaving the remaining information to provide structure and context for the students note taking. Visit the website for additional guidelines to follow when creating and implementing your guided notes.

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



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2 comments:

  1. Lisa E.September 25, 2013 at 10:47 AM

    I think the use of guided notes is an effortless way to incorporate UDL into the classroom that educators are so unaware of. This was a great way to introduce such a simple tool that is inexpensive for everyone to use UDL. Thanks for the great post Amanda.

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  2. UnknownSeptember 25, 2013 at 2:45 PM

    This PDF is awesome! So much of the time is spent on creating lesson plans that are different and hands-on. Sometimes, however, there is no good way of avoiding lecture in your teaching methods/strategies. This guide provides so many diverse ways of including whole class lecture while still promoting hands-on, inquiry based learning. I love this fact sheet so much that I printed out this out and keep it in my teaching portfolio so that I am able to touch base on it throughout my teaching experience. Students can still be hands-on in the classroom on content that may be complex or factual. That's great!

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