Window Notes
Four-Style
Four-Style
Window Notes facilitate and engagement-focused activity for students approaching a critical input experience requiring note-taking. Before exploring the content that will populate the notes, students take a piece of paper and divide into four quadrants, labeling the quadrants, Facts, Questions, Ideas, and Feelings. Traditional note-taking is limited to facts, but the Window Notes strategy also encourages students to add their own thoughts to the facts they’re learning by generating questions, ideas, and feelings based on what they’re learning.
A variation on this strategy for more procedural content (math, for example) is to label the quadrants with Facts, Steps, The Question, and, The Diagram (or picture). Doing so can guide students through a problem-solving process and encourages them to be thorough in their approach.
Simply put, note-taking is important and impactful, according to Marzano and others.
Window notes activate engaging qualities for students by helping them “make,” rather than “take” notes. When making notes, students are generating more of the content than they would otherwise in situations where they are simply recreate what the teacher shows. By adding the elements of questions, feelings, and ideas to facts when making notes, the Window Notes strategy draws students deeper into an engaging experience with the content.
Supporting Window Notes with technology is less about specifically integrating tech into the note-making part of the strategy. Where technology can really shine with Window Notes is what is done after taking them. Sure, they can live in a notebook in the student’s backpack, but how much more beneficial would it be for the student to take the notes they created and post them online in some kind of ePortfolio. Imagine each student in your class with a Google Site with a page for each unit of the year. Each unit page can have a collection of work, notes, and anything else pertinent to the unit for each student. Students can keep their individual ePortfolios individual, or share them with classmates. Once notes are online, they become infinitely more accessible for students and their parents.