Chain Notes
Chain notes begin with a response by one student that is added to by others, one at a time. It can serves a good pre-assessment at the beginning of a lesson to identify how much students already know or recall about a topic. It also helps to identify student understanding after a whole class discussion or hands-on activity.
Implementation
1. Plan for a reasonably short amount of time of no more than 10 minutes to generate the chain notes.
2. Follow the creation of the note with time for revision with the entire group or row meeting to review all of the chains.
3. To reduce the number of chain notes managed by the teacher, use small groups so students can work together to record the key ideas and revise by trading the note with another group.
4. To focus on key understanding in a unit, use manila envelopes with the objective on the outside.
· Students can record their chain note on their own paper, place it inside the envelope, and pass it to the next group.
Classroom Management
- Students can be placed in groups or the group can be a row of students.
- Provide a learning target (standard, essential learning, term to be defined, etc.) on which to focus the note.
- Allow students two minutes to write one key fact, definition, example, or characteristic of that concept.
- Have each student pass his/her paper to another student (or the student in the seat behind; last student walks his paper to the front of the row).
- One additional key fact is added to the original note.
- After 1-2 minutes, pass the note again for an additional fact, thus creating a chain note.
