A Note on Note-Taking

Some of my students asked for help with note-taking. We are flying through chapters right now, some 30 to 45 pages long. How to remember it all!?!

Here is a video that discusses the Cornell Note-Taking Method.

Here is a Cornell Note-Taking Template.

And another that you can type into and save.

I do suggest writing your notes by hand, however. For more on handwritten notes vs. typed notes, check out this article from The Atlantic Monthly.

Choice and Educational Paralysis

My students got me thinking about the role of "lectures" in the classroom today. I rarely lecture. And if I do, it is only for a few minutes.

Instead, I oftentimes employ activity lists. These lists include activities that I have created to help my students dive deeper into material that they 1) know they need more work on, or 2) that they find interesting. Students come into class having read a selection from our textbook. They then work on activity lists aimed at allowing them to exercise choice in their learning as they engage content related to their readings. My hope was that choice would lead my students to be enthusiastic about their learning; after all, they are choosing what they learn!

However, my students recently indicated that they want me to offer more lectures, PowerPoint presentations, and guided notes. We discussed this in class, and it became clear to me that what they really want is feedback, that, and more interactivity. One student said it well when she said, "We are completing these activities, but we don't know if what we are doing is correct."

One could translate my students' desire for lectures in the following way: "Give us the information that we need to memorize in order to get an A on the test." But I don't think this is what my students mean or want. I think they want to know that the work they are doing is worth their effort, that it is worth their choice. Choosing to do something can be quite frustrating if it doesn't seem worthwhile, especially if the chosen activity entails much effort.

I mentioned this to a friend and he shared the following resource with me. It is an NPR story about Barry Schwartz's TED Talk on the "Paradox of Choice." In essence, we like the idea of choice, but in the end, too many choices leave us feeling less happy. I do not think that his talk is an indictment against choice per se, but against limitless choice. I think that my early activity lists have felt limitless to my students, and therefore have also felt paralyzing.

My new aim is to provide my students with reasonable and worthwhile choice activities that will lead to interactive engagement with others over compelling course content. My hope is that choice within appropriate bounds will lead to productive content engagement and instill confidence in my students as they make self-directed learning choices.

Some Perspective on Multiple Choice

My APUSH classes began this year completing a series of multiple choice assessments using some old APUSH questions, but mostly new stimulus-based questions. Because we've been so focused on multiple choice, I thought stepping back and gaining some perspective on the role of multiple choice in our APUSH course could be helpful.

The following is the College Board's percentage breakdown of the AP US History Exam by part.

Multiple choice accounts for 40% of the entire exam. This means, that while we have focused a great deal on multiple choice at the start of the year, we should remember that the majority of the exam will focus on students' written responses. In short, multiple choice is important, but it's not the whole test; it's not even half.

DBQ Overview

This video (~15 minutes) provides an overview of the redesigned APUSH Document-Based Question:

Welcome to WWP Historians!

I teach high school social studies. My students are historians, and their classroom is their research center.

Over the course of this year, and perhaps more, I hope to populate this site with materials and resources that my students create. These student-generated materials might include annotated primary source archives, APUSH study guides, video conferences with scholars, interactive maps and timelines, and so much more.

Here, my students will be making history.