Today I am having a cup of Rooibos tea my nephew sent me from Germany. There are hints of berries and the tea is pink. I am curious to know what is in it but the ingredients are listed in German.

There has been a new trend of students coming to class without paper or pen. In response I taught students to use The Cornell note-taking method. So I was excited to see what new things I could try in this next Ontario Extend activity. The third Ontario extend activity is to listen to a TED talk and takes notes using the Cornell method.

In the first class of Communication in Health Care I show this video by Emma and I provide students with a Cornell note-taking template. I bring blank copies and a few pens for the first few weeks. In the first class we review the notes they have taken (through a think-pair-share) and I provide a model of what mine looks like.

The designers of this activity have proposed that we structure our lesson plans so that we spend ten minutes reviewing these notes at the end of each class. This process worked well in my first class so I am going to take their advice and try it in more classes.

At the beginning of the following class I plan to revisit this summary activity. In this way students who need time to process may have more questions. My hope is students will be motivated to review and bring a question.

The TED talk that I reviewed was Ramsey Musallam’s, 3 Rules to Spark Curiosity. This is another great way to think about lesson planning. How to spark curiosity and base the lesson around the student’s questions as opposed to the teacher’s questions.

Now time to run the (German tea) ingredient list through google translate.