-> Responding to a message by Ron, to Charles on ...
->
-> RM>Now this is physics, so we're figuring the top 20% of the student
-> RM>population here, and at least some of their teachers found it
-> necessary RM>to take notes FOR them!  Amazing, don't you think?
Charles wrote on 9/13/96:
-> I've not *seen* this (giving kids the notes for the class) done in a
-> classroom, but have seen the results.  It's not unusual in our
-> middle school to have kids ask me for copies of the day's notes.
-> Somewhere along the line, somebody is doing it.
->
-> This practice is *not* in the students' best interests.
I went to a Diocesan inservice on Friday (would be equivalent to a
district-wide inservice for you public school teachers ;-)
The speaker was pretty good. Entertaining, to say the least, provided a
bibliography to support her many interesting and unusual  claims and
suggestions. One point she made about notes, and she said that some
teachers may feel the need to hand out their own notes, but in that case
the students should be made to copy them over. She discussed the many
different forms of notetaking, and how some are more appropriate for
students with certain learning styles than others. The teacher's
learning style (and therefore, note-taking style) is unlikely to match
the student's style. Therefore the student should write the notes over
in their own note-taking style, to make their own sense of them.
I thought it sounded like a reasonable suggestion.
In the past, when students have missed my class for a day or three, they
may ask me for the notes. I don't really have notes to give them. I
suggest they get them from a reliable student in the class. I used to
make them take the notes down in their own hand. The last few years I
had relented and only required a xerox of the other students notes. I
wonder if I should reverse that policy?
Sheila
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