Cornell Notes in the Math Classroom

A preview of the Guided Notes

When I was in middle school I was in the AVID program.  Needless to say, I thought I was hot sh**.  I always had good grades, never had to study, never had to put any effort into my school work.  Then 7th grade hit.  I found myself in harder math and language art classes, and I was in crisis mode.  I wasn't able to get by without studying anymore.  I will never forget when my AVID teacher taught us about Cornell Notes. Instead of zoning out, I was so focused on learning this technique because I could feel how important this was to me.  I started using Cornell notes in every subject all the way throughout college.  Yet when I became a teacher, I stopped using them.  I simply forgot about them.  About a month ago I was cruising on Pinterest and found a picture that talked about how the brain works and how note taking with Cornell notes have been proven to help students perform better.  It was like a light bulb went off.  If it helped me, it could help my students.  I tried doing a couple of lessons where my students created their own Cornell notes using a piece of paper, folding it, drawing a line down the crease, yada yada.  And I found that the majority of my math lesson was spent of setting up the Cornell notes.  SO, I created the following guided notes that are set up in Cornell form.  This allows the students to still process the information by creating questions, but without spending the time on set up.  

Answer Key
Guided Notes for Dividing Fractions

Guided Notes for One Step Equations (Based upon This awesome middle school math teacher)