Week 3: Study Skills

Tuesday, 10/4/11

Today we learned how to take Cornell notes.  Most of the students had taken notes in this style, which is wonderful.  Cornell is the note-taking format preferred by most major universities and law schools.  RISE students are already college bound!

We took Cornell notes on developing smart study skills.  This took the majority of the class, and we concluded by writing a 3-4 sentence summary of the notes.


Wednesday, 10/5/11

Today was all about critical reading.  Students know how to read by 6th grade, but they don't know how the think while they read.  That's why you get the kid who read 3 chapters, then responds to questions about said chapters with a timid, "I don't know."

We read an article entitled, "Clean Hair or Clean Air?"  We marked up the article in two rounds.
1.  We numbered the paragraphs, so that we can refer back to the later in writing or discussion.
2.  We read through thoroughly, circling any key terms or new vocabulary we encountered. 

Once the students did that individually and silently, we came together as a class.  Each student walked up to the example of the article on the SMART Board and circled one term they had found.

We'll continue with critical reading tomorrow.


Thursday, 10/6/11

We ended our week by continuing critical reading.

After filling out grade journals and checking binders, we returned to yesterday's article.  We had already numbered paragraphs and circled key terms. 

To review we looked for the author's main purpose for writing this article.  Based on the terms students agreed upon, we concluded that his point it "Palm oil is bad for the environment."  I wrote that on the board.

For the next two rounds we:
3.  Highlighted evidence that supports this claim.
4.  Wrote one summary for every two paragraphs in the left margin.  Since there are 12 paragraphs, each student did 6 summaries.

 Next week we'll work with motivation.