Students Can Take Notes from The Visuals
Instead of having students take notes from a lecture, try first giving students a visual and having a structured conversation based on one of the questions. After they have a conversation, you can:
- As a class, create a bullet-point list of important ideas from the visual for students to copy down, or
- Have students create a list of important points based on the conversations from their groups, or
- Have students write out their answer to the question in their notebooks
This way, the note-taking process is a process of reflection on a hands-on activity, rather than passively following along in the class.
Complete the Picture
As a warm-up, introduction to a concept, or even as a review, show students a visual with half of it covered up. Then ask them to draw the second half, or have a conversation in their small groups about what the second half might look like, or both. The visual could be displayed on the board, or by copying and pasting it into a PowerPoint file and covering one side with a rectangle, the visual could be printed out for each group.