I tend to tie it to information reports because the teachers work on it then and it seems a little easier to take notes. I got the kids to fold a blank piece of paper to make 6 boxes (fold down middle then in thirds - you can do this to any piece of paper and don't need to muck around with rulers.. yay!) and in each box they put a heading of what they wanted to find out. (We looked at this point in relation to what was required in the report we were going to write, it was often 'Habitat', 'Diet' and things like that). We used some source information (World Book) and they wrote dot points in the boxes. We noted that the information didn't always come to us in the order of the boxes and it was kind of like sorting out lego and we had to decide which box to sort it into. Then (next lesson) I gave them notes I'd taken and asked them if they could critically review them, offering me any advice. We looked at what criteria good notes would have and away they went and marked my work (and oh boy did they mark it). I asked them to give me feedback of where I could improve and what I did well, which they all did really well. I then asked them to look at their notes, could they identify where they need to improve and what they did well? (Yes!) We did the same fold and note take process a few times, reviewing the notes and how we could improve them each time, or where they struggled. Post completion of this unit students completed their survey and identified they felt more confident with note taking, knowing what the goal of it was and a process they could go through. Most could independently take decent notes on a topic and use those notes to produce a report. I wasn't aiming for them to generate new information from the activity, just to be able to take notes and then to get as much information back out of their notes.

Do the kids understand the purpose of note-taking and are they familiar with the concept of keywords? Are they mature enough and do they know enough to be able to build their own sentences from a list of words for which they might not have any background knowledge beyond that which they've just been introduced to? Do they understand why they have to build a new text when someone has already written one for them? There is such a lot of conceptual development that has to underpin the skill. What I did, mostly with Yr 5 and 6, was to give them a description of Bilbo Baggins or The BFG and together we'd go through and highlight the words that they would need to be able to draw either of them. It was a collaborative effort done on a full screen because for some, the concept of keywords was a mystery. When they'd got all they could they then used the words to draw their interpretation and then we discussed why each drawing was so different, bringing in the concepts of prior knowledge (such as having seen the film); and different perspectives because different things were important to us as individuals. Nothing was too formal - it was all about building the concepts rather than specific, step-by-step skills. Choose any character from any book for which is there is a well-written description. I used Bilbo Baggins because The Hobbit and LOTR were the characters-du-jour because of the movies. I was reading them The BFG at the time.