Taking Movie Notes

In the last week or so, I've been showing videos on class but students only wanted to watch. They didn't want to take notes.  They do not get as much out of the videos as they could.  I realized, no one had ever shown them how to take notes.

 Although about half to three quarters of my students speak English, they are classified as English Language Learning.  This means they may not fully understand everything they hear on a video.

I think previous teachers never considered math as having its own language and assumed since they speak English, they understand language well enough to take notes.

I don't always have time to sit down and preview the movie before showing it so I can't type up a list of questions.  Instead, I'm showing the movies in class but taking time to stop it so students can write down the important information.

Students at this school, arrive in high school without certain skills including identifying the important information, even on a math video.  They also do not know how to read a math textbook to identify important information.

Two skills which are important in today's world.  When I got to high school, I didn't quite have the note taking skills down but I at least wrote everything I could because I was afraid I would miss something.  It wasn't until I started teaching, I learned how to distinguish among important vs unimportant information.

My plan is to continue showing videos but slowly move from me being in charge of stopping it, to letting students signal when the video should be stopped so they can take the note.  Eventually, I want to post the videos with questions integrated so they can watch and learn after school or if they are absent or traveling.

I don't think its just my students.  I think taking notes while watching movies has slipped by us as teachers.  We don't think to take the time to make sure students know how to take notes or use the video in an effective way to increase learning. I have in the past assumed a student who was watching the video would remember what they saw but I'm not sure that is correct.

Check back tomorrow, for suggestions on using videos effectively.