Monday, April 10, 2017

Rethinking Notes in Middle School

by guest blogger Hannah Bain, GCMS

At the start of the 2016-2017 school year, I knew walking into my classroom that I wanted to make this year my best yet. This is my 3rd year at Gray’s Creek Middle School teaching 7th grade Social Studies, and I have loved every minute, but I wanted to change things up within my classroom. I bought new, colorful Social Studies posters, I decorated with bright pictures, but I wanted to do more for my students. During the past two years, I have been very focused on written notes, lengthy powerpoints and a myriad of supplemental videos. My efforts have not been met with much enthusiasm, and I was tired of feeling like I was lecturing my students instead of engaging them.

During our workdays before school started, Emily Werner and I got together and discussed how we wanted to approach this school year. We decided, because so many of the same concepts are repeated throughout the year, that we needed to spend more time exploring those concepts rather than drilling the “facts.” We revamped our powerpoints, threw the fill-in-the-blank notes out the window and never looked back. We have focused a great deal on student-led learning and activities, and I can truly tell the difference it’s making in my students. They are so excited everyday to come in and learn; I rarely have to struggle to keep their attention. I make sure that the children are working to create meaningful products, whether it is a lap book, a foldable or some other tangible note organizer. The fact they are spending more time “doing” instead of more time “writing,” has given me more time to act as a facilitator, walking around to address students personally, which I rarely had time to do when we did notes on a day to day basis.


We have really focused on organizing the information, rather than simply memorizing it. Graphic organizers, especially student made organizers, have become a favorite tool of mine this year. Because the students are working to put the information in a logical position so that an event “flows,” they are forced to actually realize what makes that particular event important and how it relates to the larger picture. We have also started utilizing thinking maps to organize information. For instance, during the French Revolution, students created an in-depth, illustrated flow map to chronicle the high and low points throughout France leading up to and during the French Revolution.


Our greatest asset this year during our WWII unit has been “The World Wars” series from History Channel. I bought this series two years ago, but never used it in the classroom. I decided, while we were revamping everything else, I would incorporate this into our World Wars unit. The visuals and the testimonies included from famous historians and politicians, has really succeeded in grabbing the students attention and bringing their level of understanding further than I thought possible. To keep the students accountable, I have also used the movie guides created by History channel to give the students critical thinking response questions, homework assignments and exit tickets.

Overall, this year has far exceeded my expectations in terms of student participation and evident engagement. I am constantly amazed by the amount of information that these have retained and are able to recall and apply to each subsequent lesson.