Power Notes

	Text Link	Rationale for Choosing	Text Frame(s)	Strategy Used and Resource
Engagement Example	Artificial Sweeteners: Friends or Foes?	This article is relevant and informative to students and their diets. It gives just enough scientific evidence in simple text so that students can still comprehend the focus.	Concept/Definition	Power Notes (Buehl Book)

     Power Notes is a simplified version of outlining. Typical outlines can become very detail oriented while Power Notes focuses on main ideas. It gives students a way to differentiate between examples and details from main ideas. This strategy assists students in organizing texts to allow for easier reading, writing, and studying.

           

     In Power Notes main ideas are given a power 1 rating. Details or examples that follow are given power ratings of 2, 3, or 4. To demonstrate this to students I would use a simple topic first as an example. Using vegetables as the main idea or power 1 then providing power 2 ratings to carrots, corn, green beans. Power 3 ratings could be details describing the various vegetables; their color, shape, or texture. Once they have grasped the basic concept a lesson could be used to show further demonstration. Vocabulary words in a lesson could be used and students would need to determine whether they would be a power 1, 2, or 3.

            

     For me this strategy hits home in my studying strategies. I have always been a visual learner and by this I mean I need to take notes or make outlines. Seeing how things fall into place helps me to better understand concepts and lessons. I have a hard time gathering my thoughts but writing them down in an outline helps substantially.

           

     With this lesson I would have students read the article in class and then together we would determine what main ideas would get a power 1 rating and then what would go under as the power 2’s and 3’s. I would want the class to do it together so that the students would get a better idea of how to plan it out for their future lessons to assist in their studying.

            

     Advantages of this reading strategy are that it allows the student to learn how to prioritize and actively read texts. One disadvantage that teachers should be aware of is if the student is including too many details on the Power Notes. It is meant to be a guideline, a way to gather the main ideas. If they are including too much they will have a hard distinguishing between the main ideas and the details. Overall the strategy should help students to better organize their lessons and thus improve both their reading and writing.

Below is my Power Notes for the article

1. Sugars

2. Carbohydrate

3. made from carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen

2. Energy source

3. important for function

2. Cheap

3. easy to obtain

3. food manufacturers more likely to use

1. Artificial Sweeteners

2. Saccharin

3. chemist Constanin Fahlberg

3. coal tar

3. Sweet-n-Low

3. causes bladder cancer in rats

2. Cyclamate

3. banned in US

2. Aspartame

3. Nutrasweet

3. Equal

3. chemist licked fingers in lab to discover

3. weakly linked to brain tumors

2. Sucralose

3. Splenda

3. grad student tasted chemical by mistake

References:

Marr, I. (2012, February 1). Artificial Sweeteners: Friends or Foes? Retrieved from                            https://learn.thinkcerca.com/student_assignments/1715015/lesson_steps/1            

Buehl, D. (2014). Classroom Strategies for Interactive Learning (4th ed., pp. 155-157).                    Newark, DE: International Reading Association.