Chapter 14 page 315
words, a column for explanations or information from
the text or diagrams of the concepts, and a column for
questions that we have about the vocabulary or the
concepts we read about. Does this note-taking sheet
accomplish the same things as the note-taking step in the
social studies process?
Student 4: It does. It’s just a different way to record the
information. It seems weird to do it this way instead of
just on a piece of paper.
Teacher: What are the advantages of using a format like this
when we are reading an easy-reading book?
Student 1: You can see the key vocabulary words because they are
in a separate column.
Student 3: In social studies we don’t write down questions that we
have. We write down important information from the
book.
Teacher: You’re right. This part of the note-taking process is
different than the format you use in social studies
because it helps to highlight the important vocabulary
we need to identify at this early stage in our search, and
it gives us an opportunity to generate questions that we
think about as we are doing the easy reading. Let’s
experiment with this different format for recording notes
as we go through the first easy-reading book together.
Students can discuss advantages
and disadvantages of different ways
of implementing the note-taking
strategy.This transcript shows students who have a great deal of metacognitive knowledge about strategies. The
students demonstrate an impressive ability to discuss what strategies they use, how to use them, and why
they are useful. When teachers engage students in discussions about strategies, students can attain this high
degree of metacognitive knowledge of strategies.
Problem 14.3. Designing instruction. Making Thinking Visible
A high school literature teacher is working with students on summarization. Students have read the
text below.
Women in American Literature
In the latter half of the nineteenth century, women became the nation’s dominant culture
force, a position they have never relinquished. Ladies’ journalism began to flourish. In 1891,
The Ladies Home Journal (founded in 1883) became the first American magazine to exceed a
circulation of half a million; by 1905 it had reached a million. A new generation of women
authors appeared whose poetry and fiction enlivened the pages of popular ten-cent monthly
and weekly magazines. The greatest woman writer of her age, Emily Dickinson, was almost
completely unknown; her first collection of poetry was not published until 1890, four years
after her death. The American reading public’s visible appetite for sentiment and sensation
was constantly fed by such writers as Mrs. E.E. Southworth, who filled uncountable numbers
of novels with romantic extravagance; ancestral curses, sudden passions, villains blasted, and
heroes triumphant. Sales of such “molasses fiction” far exceeded the sales of works by such
highly regarded writers such as William Dean Howells, Edith Wharton, Henry James, and even
Mark Twain.
The teacher asks one of her students, Aimee, to summarize the text. This is the first time that the
teacher has heard Aimee provide a summary in class. Here is Aimee’s response: “Well, I think that the