How to Boost Engagement and Keep Students Thinking with Guided Notes [Episode 289]

Heidi 0:00
This is episode 289 of Teacher Approved.

Heidi 0:06
You’re listening to Teacher Approved, the podcast helping educators elevate what matters and simplify the rest. I’m Heidi.

Emily 0:13
And I’m Emily. We’re the creators behind Second Story Window, where we give research-based and teacher-approved strategies that make teaching less stressful and more effective. You can check out the show notes and resources from each episode at secondstorywindow.net.

Heidi 0:28
We’re so glad you’re tuning in today. Let’s get to the show.

Emily 0:36
Hey there! Thanks for joining us today. In today’s episode, we’re talking about how to keep students thinking while you’re teaching, and we’ve got a tip to keep the end of October from sneaking up on you.

Heidi 0:48
But first, let’s start with a try it tomorrow, where we share a quick win that you can try in your classroom right away. Emily, what is our suggestion for this week?

Emily 0:57
Okay, this week put a sticky note on your desk or somewhere else private with the name of the student that you feel like you’ve connected with the least so far this school year, and then make time to have a quick conversation with that kid. Because it can be so easy to overlook the kids who don’t ask you for anything, but the quiet kids need some attention too.

Heidi 1:17
And then next week you can write down a different name, and before long, you will have gotten to most of your class without ever having to schedule anything big.

Emily 1:25
Yes, it’s so easy to do. If you like this idea or anything else we share here on the podcast, would you do us a favor and share this episode with a teacher friend?

Heidi 1:35
Well, here is a not quite hypothetical situation for you. You have carefully planned your lesson. All of those materials are prepped. You are giving the lesson your all, and then you look around the room, and some students are listening. Some have completely zoned out. There’s the one kid that is asking to go to the bathroom for the third time since lunch, and you’re standing there rethinking your whole life and wondering, are they learning, or am I just talking?

Emily 2:02
Oh, so relatable, and I’m willing to put money on the fact that you have been there too. Maybe it’s even something you encounter daily. So, what is a busy teacher to do? Well, that’s what we’re going to talk about today.

Heidi 2:17
But before we get into that, let’s focus on the why. Why does any of this matter? And to do that, we need to think about engagement. And our teacher-approved definition of engagement is the degree to which students are positively involved and willingly participating in what is happening in class. And to get that definition, I had to pull our book off of my shelf and look at the definition. That was kind of a fun little moment. I never thought I would have that experience. But going back to the example, I think we would all agree that the level of engagement in that example lesson was pretty low.

Emily 2:52
Yeah, and that really matters not just because low engagement means decreased learning, which obviously that’s important, but also because of what it increases. When students are disengaged, they will come up with something to do. They’re not going to just sit there quietly.

Heidi 3:09
And you know the odds are that the activity they invent is probably going to look something like pestering a neighbor or stabbing an eraser with a pencil or something even more distracting. So, keeping students engaged really just makes everyone’s life easier. Now that might mean adding more cooperative learning, or it could be adding more games. I love to teach with games, but what do you do mid instruction?

Emily 3:34
This is where active student response comes in.

Heidi 3:38
Yeah, and if you go back to episode 161, we shared five techniques for giving students opportunities to respond mid lesson. So you can check that out if you want more details. But today we have got a sixth technique, which is very hard to say. Sixth technique, and that is guided notes.

Emily 3:57
Yes, and this is a new one for us. This is something we came across when we were writing our book, and the research on it looks really promising. So we’re bringing it here to you to talk about, even though this is not something we are experts on.

Heidi 4:10
No, but it seems so important we just couldn’t let it slide.

Emily 4:14
Right.

Heidi 4:14
So when you hear guided notes, you might picture a high school lecture and a worksheet full of blanks to fill in, which is fair because that’s probably where most of us have seen this. But that is just one version of guided notes.

Emily 4:28
And that is not the version that you would use if you’re teaching kindergarten or first grade. Guided notes are teacher-prepared materials that give students some of the structure and some of the important information, and then leaves intentional spaces for students to record, predict, and explain.

Heidi 4:46
So you know you could give students one of those fill-in-the-blank pages, but there really are so many more possibilities. Guided notes can involve writing headings, diagrams, definitions, sentence starters, and way more. So you are providing the framework. Students are contributing the thinking.

Emily 5:02
And that last part is what makes guided notes so useful. It’s not that they give children something to do during a lesson; it’s that they get the kids thinking.

Heidi 5:11
And I’m sure that most of us have handed out something like this: the three branches of government are the blank, blank, and blank branches. You know, and that’s fine, but a kid can fill it in without having to think about anything at all, really.

Emily 5:25
Especially if you’re pausing the lesson and telling them exactly what to write. Now compare that to a page that opens with a question like this: Your town is deciding whether to build a new park. Who should get a say in that decision, and why? Students can then write down their opinion first before you teach anything.

Heidi 5:44
And then you go through your lesson and you teach about the three branches, and they can fill in those details as they go. And at the end, they go back to their original opinion. What would you change now, and what would you keep?

Emily 5:55
Either way, kids are writing, but the second version pushes them to think about what they know about government. How is the mayor like the president? Who has the power to do what? What role do citizens play in the decision?

Heidi 6:08
There is a real difference between students doing something and students thinking about something. A kid can be very busy and learn very little.

Emily 6:17
And if we swing back to the management side of this, a student who has nothing to do right this second is a student looking for something to do. So let’s give them a job. When everyone has something in front of them that frequently needs their attention, they’re more likely to learn and less likely to tip back in their chairs.

Heidi 6:35
I hate that. Ah, it drives me nuts.

Emily 6:38
All four on the floor.

Heidi 6:41
Oh wait, should it be six on the floor? Doesn’t rhyme though.

Emily 6:44
It’s true. All four on the floor sounds better, but yeah, technically, I guess it would be six unless your students are so little their feet don’t reach the floor. But then they probably couldn’t bring back, right?

Heidi 6:54
Oh yeah.

Emily 6:56
Sorry for that little rabbit trail.

Heidi 6:59
Detour. Well, as we mentioned, fill-in-the-blank notes are one form of guided notes. But if you want to move past that, where do you even start?

Emily 7:08
Well, you’re in luck because we’ve boiled it down to five steps: plan, give, pause, respond, and apply. And don’t worry, we’re going to explain them all in detail.

Heidi 7:18
So first up is plan. Start by asking yourself what students could do to demonstrate understanding. Maybe you want them to predict or explain something, or maybe you you really do want them to fill in some blanks.

Emily 7:31
And that’s fine as long as the action is demonstrating real understanding. If students can predict what goes in the blank, they get so busy scanning for the next word that they tune out everything in between.

Heidi 7:41
And when that happens, you’ve basically just turned your lesson into a scavenger hunt. So avoid that, and then consider the second step in creating guided notes, and that is to give. Tell us about this one, Emily.

Emily 7:55
This is where you give students a framework so they aren’t staring down a blank piece of paper. That might mean providing relevant headings, a diagram with the labels missing, or a blank table to fill in. But whatever you give students needs to be tailored to their abilities.

Heidi 8:11
So for lower grades, we are barely going to call these notes. Students can draw what they noticed or add simple labels to a diagram. The guided part of guided notes means providing the right scaffolding. So for the young ones, try to limit writing to just one-word responses.

Emily 8:29
That’s not because we’re anti-writing, but it’s because a seven-year-old who is listening, deciding what matters, spelling it, and forming the letters is doing four hard things at the same time, and that is just too much to manage.

Heidi 8:41
No, something’s got to give there. So maybe for a lesson on seeds, the page asks, What do seeds need to grow? And then there are pictures of possible answers like sun, water, a taco, a T-shirt, etc. And students circle the correct answers as you talk about them during the lesson.

Emily 8:59
And at the end, you could even circle back and have a discussion about why plants don’t need tacos.

Heidi 9:05
Oh, poor plants! I just had tacos for dinner. The little plants don’t know what they’re missing out on.

Emily 9:09
I know it’s so sad for them, but plants often do make good tacos themselves. So maybe that’s a consolation.

Heidi 9:17
No, I bet it’s not. Circling pictures is a low enough entry point that even kindergarteners can manage it. But as kids get more capable, they need a different kind of framework.

Emily 9:31
Right. If you’re teaching character change to fourth graders, you might give three sentence starters. At the beginning of the story, Maya blank. An important event was blank. After that event, Maya blank. The structure does the organizing so students can put their energy into learning the content.

Heidi 9:48
And then after you’ve made your note-taking page, the third step is to pause. Build stopping places into your lesson where you quit talking and you prompt the students to do something.

Emily 9:59
This step is easy to plan and hard to do. If you’re on a roll and it’s going well, stopping mid-lesson feels like losing momentum. But if you teach for 12 minutes straight and then hand out a page, that page isn’t part of the lesson anymore. It’s an assignment.

Heidi 10:13
So if this feels awkward or frustrating, remind yourself that the pause doesn’t have to be long. A minute, or really even like 30 seconds is plenty because with guided notes, students are responsible for just one answer at a time and not the full page.

Emily 10:28
And if you’re not sure where the pauses go, look at your lesson plan for the places where you’d normally check for understanding, and then you can stick them in there.

Heidi 10:35
Now you are giving your class a quick way to demonstrate their understanding, which helps you know if they are ready to move on or if they need more explanation.

Emily 10:45
Okay, once you’ve paused the lesson, the fourth step is respond. This is where the students do all their writing, drawing, labeling, circling, choosing, or solving.

Heidi 10:54
And don’t worry that the drawing might be undercutting the learning. Research shows that drawing a response, like drawing a picture to define a vocabulary word actually creates deeper understanding, so you’re really winning in multiple ways with that one.

Emily 11:09
And finally, the fifth step is apply. Before the lesson ends, give students one chance to use what they learned. Maybe they need to solve a problem, defend an opinion, list some examples, or write a summary sentence. You’re looking for something to close the loop on the learning.

Heidi 11:25
One of my favorite apply activities with my second graders was having students write how they would explain the concept to a first grader. Because to a second grader, first graders are, they’re just little babies, tiny beings. Yes, on a totally different planet. So that prompt gave them the chance to feel like an expert, but my goal with it was to really force them to think about the topic and break it down to the simplest pieces.

Emily 11:51
Yeah, and bonus, this doubles as your exit ticket, so you’ve got an assessment built right into the lesson.

Heidi 11:57
And that is the whole recipe for guided notes: plan, give, pause, respond, and apply.

Emily 12:04
And then do one more thing: keep these notes in circulation. You know how it usually goes: students finish the page, it goes in a folder, and nobody ever looks at it again.

Heidi 12:12
But there really is so much more you can get out of this page. It can be a study guide. Use it for retrieval practice. You know we love that, so you can let partners quiz each other with their notes pages, or turn it into another exit ticket, or even tomorrow’s warm up.

Emily 12:26
You already did the work of building it. You may as well get more than one day out of it. So the next time you’re standing at the front of the room wondering whether anybody is with you, you won’t have to guess. You can look down at 24 pages and see the learning right there.

Heidi 12:40
And if our content is resonating with you, would you take a second and give us a five-star rating in your podcast player? Ratings and reviews are one way that new listeners find us, so really every rating and review is a huge help to us.

Emily 12:53
Now for our teacher-approved tip of the week, where we share an actionable tip to help you elevate what matters and simplify the rest. This week’s teacher-approved tip is get your Halloween plan settled now. Help us out with it, Heidi.

Heidi 13:08
Well, we are officially into October, which means if your class celebrates Halloween, the party is closer than it feels. And party planning has a way of turning into an emergency around the 28th. So this week, if you have not heard from your room parent yet, reach out. Just casually ask if they need help with anything, and that will give you a good idea whether anything is being planned.

Emily 13:30
Yeah, because the last thing that you want is to find out three days before that everybody assumed that somebody else had it handled, which is just the worst. And I have to say, if I was back in the classroom, I would just decide what the activities are going to be myself, and then I would just ask parents to man those stations. So, if that’s something you could get away with, you might want to consider that option.

Heidi 13:53
Yeah, that is how I did my class parties. Partly, it started because I didn’t have a lot of involved parents in the school population when I started, but then as it grew on, I realized that parents don’t have a ton of experience planning group activities for kids, and it was just easier for me to plan something because I knew it would keep everybody engaged full time, and it wouldn’t be 25 kids watching one kid eat a donut off a string and all of the chaos that came with that.

Emily 14:20
Oh yes, I’ve seen it all, and I see it way more now as the room parent than I actually saw as the teacher. I’m seeing way more like, oh no, what are you guys thinking, the teacher should have given better guidelines.

Heidi 14:33
And if you want some help planning and running a low stress, low mess, low chaos class party, we can definitely help you out. We’ve put all of our best tips in episodes 33, 34, and 96, and those are even specifically about Halloween. So you really are covered with those.

Emily 14:52
And you can check out our shop for some Halloween helpers. We’ve got festive breaks, a differentiated Halloween review packet that’s super fun. There’s a my pet ghost activity, writing activity that’s super popular, and some other fun book activities and more.

Heidi 15:08
And if you want even more festive sparkle, we’ve got a fun resource for teacher approved club members. This month we’re giving members four morning work pages: one for Halloween, one for fall, one for Christmas and one for winter.

Emily 15:22
We’ve got pages for grades K through five, and the nice thing is the pages follow our familiar morning work layout. So if kids are already used to using morning work each day, these pages give you a way to have a little seasonal fun without derailing your structure.

Heidi 15:37
If you are already a Teacher Approved Club member, you can find these pages in the tools section, and if you’re not a member, what are you waiting for?

Emily 15:44
Yeah, each month we give you a new resource not available anywhere else, a bonus podcast episode just for you, and credits to use in our store. You can find the link to sign up for the Teacher Approved Club in the show notes.

Heidi 15:58
Okay, to wrap up the show, we are sharing what we’re giving extra credit to this week. Emily, what gets your extra credit?

Emily 16:03
Well, I feel bad doing this because we have talked about this particular extra credit many, many times. But I’m doing it anyway because I love it so much. I’m giving extra credit to The Traitors. It is back for a new season.

Heidi 16:18
It’s so good, though.

Emily 16:19
Alan is more fabulous than ever. And this season is quote unquote normies, but really a lot of them are like internet, I recognize several of them from Instagram. Yes, some of them are people I don’t know, but I mean I don’t think they’re technically really normies. But so far it’s been fun. I think there’s pros and cons to a celebrity season versus a normal, but they also just announced the celebrity cast that’s going to be coming out I think early 2027, so all The Traitors content, just put it in my veins.

Heidi 16:55
It’s such a fun show. I normally prefer the celebrity seasons because I feel so bad when someone who’s like, oh yeah, we’re we would use this money for an adoption because we have infertility, and then they’re like immediately voted out, and you’re like, no. But knowing that these people are like influencers on Instagram, it takes some of the sting out. Where you’re like, okay, they’ll be fine.

Emily 17:19
Yes, this is so good. So if you haven’t watched it, start with the current season because you really don’t need the past seasons. You don’t need to watch them in order. And I feel like if you watch it live, it’s so much more fun because other people are talking about it. So go ahead and keep up with it with the new season. So I think to start, they’re doing like two episodes a week for a few weeks, and then going to one per week, so you can definitely still get caught up and join us on our Traitors journey. What are you giving extra credit to, Heidi?

Heidi 17:49
I know I say this every week, but my extra credit is such a pivot, and it really is. So my extra credit goes to Victoria Magazine. Their website says it’s a women’s lifestyle magazine created for all those who love heritage linens, charming homes, gracious gardens, traveling the world, and all that is beautiful in life. Pretty far from The Traitors.

Emily 18:14
Hey, that they have heritage linens in that castle.

Heidi 18:16
That castle would fit right in here. I bet this castle has been featured in the Victoria Magazine.

Emily 18:19
I bet so.

Heidi 18:21
It’s been around forever. Well, the magazine and the castle. But, so basically, it’s if you have ever wanted to walk around in the world of Anne of Green Gables or Outlander or anything with beautiful sets and costumes, you might enjoy Victoria. So this was my favorite magazine when I was a teenager.

Emily 18:43
This is just giving such a picture of who you are.

Heidi 18:47
Like I just would go to my friends’ rooms, and they would have like Kirk Cameron on the walls, torn out of Tiger Beat or whatever. And I was at home drooling over the bathroom fixtures in this fancy house that I would never visit, but beautiful sink and it explains too much, I think,

Emily 19:08
Yeah, all of your lore is uncovered.

Heidi 19:12
Yeah. So, as a grown up, I have not subscribed. I just followed their Instagram account because the pictures are just so dreamy and elegant. But a targeted ad got me with a good deal. I think it was less than $30 for a year, so I subscribed, and it really is lovely. It’s got interesting articles, and it also just looks really nice laying out on a table.

Emily 19:36
That’s so funny. I’m glad you can enjoy the magazine from your youth. I do remember looking at many of Victoria Magazine because you had it laying around.

Heidi 19:46
I saved them, I saved them.

Emily 19:48
I know.

Heidi 19:49
I’m really sad I don’t have them now because there’s things I want to reference.

Emily 19:53
Yeah. Well, I hope you’re keeping these ones.

Heidi 19:56
No, I think I gave them to mom so she could junk journal.

Emily 19:58
Oh no.

Heidi 20:02
Oh well.

Heidi 20:04
Well, that is it for today’s episode. This week, try preparing guided notes for just one lesson, and see how it boosts your students’ engagement and learning.

Heidi 20:14
We hope you enjoyed this episode of Teacher Approved. I’m Heidi.

Emily 20:18
And I’m Emily. Thank you for listening. Be sure to follow or subscribe in your podcast app so that you never miss an episode. You can connect with us and other teachers in the Teacher Approved Facebook group.

Heidi 20:29
We’ll see you here next week. Bye for now.

Emily 20:31
Bye.