Teaching Note-Taking Skills

For the past couple of years I have been working on ways to improve our students' note-taking skills and increasing the number strategies they use while reading during research.  Last week I used an activity from the website ReadWriteThink called "Fact Fragment Frenzy".  Check it out! http://www.readwritethink.org/files/resources/interactives/factfrenzy/opening.html

The students (4th and 5th grades) did a really nice job working in pairs using laptops and dragging the "fact fragments" over to the notepad.  Several students also told me "That was fun!".  Hey, anytime I hear that a library media skill activity is fun, I'm happy!

This week I followed up the "Fact Fragment Frenzy" activity with a summarizing activity.  I used an idea from the Reading Quest Strategies website, http://www.readingquest.org/strat/summarize.html called "Sum It Up".  Using laptops, I had the 4th grade students read an article about a planet from World Book Online (they are studying the solar system in science) and complete the worksheet from "Sum It Up".  I asked them to read the article first and then write down Fact Fragments under the section labeled "Main Idea Words".  I circulated among the students and gave them tips (if needed) on how to write down only the "fragments" not complete sentences.   Some of them got it right away!  Others needed a few strategies or suggestions (like using 2nd instead of writing out "second", not repeating the name of the planet over and over, etc.).  Only a few students had time to get to the 2nd half of the activity sheet where they narrowed down the main idea words to only 20.  We only had about 20-25 minutes to complete the whole lesson, so I thought they did a good job for the most part.

Today's 4th grade class was the first I had to do the "Sum It Up" activity, but I will do it with the remaining 4th grade classes and all the 5th grade classes.

I will probably do another note-taking activity in several weeks coordinating with the teachers when the students will be doing research for a class project.

"The Voice of Future Libraries"

I signed up today to be a part of a on-line community about libraries and their future, called "The Voice of Future Libraries".  It looks like it will be an interesting place to interact and connect to other people who are interested in our future!

http://ideaspace.my-take.com/

Care of Library Book Video...Cute!!

A teacher shared this video, "Don't Let the Pigeon Touch the Books!"  Another way to get the students' attention in an entertaining fashion.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzETnigMO-w&feature=youtube_gdata_player