Enhance your Instruction with Note-Taking AND Note-Drawing

What kids do while we teach them makes a huge difference in whether or not they will retain their newfound knowledge.   Teachers give their best effort to make great teaching the constant, but learning will always be the variable if they don't make a plan to guarantee that students actively retain what they are taught. To ensure that learning remains the constant, educators must continuously ask this guiding question. 

"What are kids doing while we're teaching them?"

Research proves that we retain at most 10% of what we hear, so if kids have nothing to do while they are listening to our instruction, what will they retain?  Chances are that they will retain nothing, and if they do remember what they hear, there's a strong chance that it won't be the most important 10% that they needed to remember.  

If we want to help kids retain what we teach, we must incorporate some form of note taking into our daily lessons. Note-taking is one of the highest yield strategies (SEE HERE for the RESEARCH), but note-taking is often thought of as a skill that's not very condusive to kids who like to doodle and draw.  Well, there are many benefits to all forms of note-taking and all of them help all kids learn more information in virtually every classroom.  See "The Biggest Benefits to Note-taking. But what blew my mind more than the research was this video below. If we want to help our "off-task" doodlers and drawers take meaningful notes and ultimately learn more, we must find a way to incorporate their artistic abilities into note-taking in a manner that works best for them.