What it is. Notes taken for an essay are laid out as the essay will run, with quotations and pages attached.
Why our test works. Notes taken to REMEMBER and notes taken to WRITE FROM are different objects, and children do not discover the difference until they are three hours into a paper hunting for a page number. The test is the honest one — can you actually write from this — and it is answerable on the spot, before the cost is incurred. It is also precisely what Grade 8's two project cycles will demand.
Leans on. Grade 7 noted dense text. This notes it for a purpose.
Watch for. A quotation with no page number is a quotation that will be dropped or invented later. Insist on the page at the moment of writing.
Take notes structured so they can be written from directly. The worked example is the one you build on the board: Teacher models notes on a source, marking which lines would become topic sentences. The class reads Writing Book 8, p.41 — our own page, so a child who was absent can still get the lesson.
You open by saying where this sits — what it follows and what it is part of — in one sentence, and then you give them the reason it matters, in your own words, for about ten seconds.
Then you do one yourself, building it on the board and leaving it up: Teacher models notes on a source, marking which lines would become topic sentences. The board copy is what they look back at when they stall, so it stays there for the whole lesson.
The We-do is the main whiteboard moment of the lesson — short answers, boards up on your signal, every child visible at once. Class marks two lines that could open a paragraph. If the answer is a whole sentence rather than a word, take it on their notebooks instead, because a sentence written on a whiteboard is written once and destroyed.
They open Writing Book 8 to page 41 and read it with you. Stop at the worked example and let them look at it.
Exit directions in full, standing still, before anyone moves. Then they work alone: Take notes on a source and mark the lines that could become topic sentences.
You close on the exit direction — Read one line you marked. — taken from every child before anyone stands, and then the line you want them to still have tomorrow: One main idea per paragraph you intend to write, in essay order.
A quotation with no page number is a quotation that will be dropped or invented later. Insist on the page at the moment of writing.