Learning how to take notes/outline from sermons

[lulalu]

Has anyone used sermons as a way to learn how to take notes and outline? 

As we are listening here at home, I thought this might be a good time to work on this as we can pause, and talk while at home, rewind if needed. 

DS is 8 and I haven't required him to take notes at church before. 

I am thinking maybe start by helping him set up a page with areas to write 3 main points. Then pausing when a main point comes up for him to write it down. Then after a while adding in one subpoint from the main point. 

So:

1.

2.

3. 

 

Working towards:

1. 

    A. 

2.

    A. 

3. 

    A. 

 

I am simply thinking this through myself with no guide on how to outline. Any simple articles or books to look at for the how to? 

What have others done? 

[8filltheheart]

I wouldn't have an 8 yr old take notes from oral sources. Notetaking is a difficult task even from simple written sources at that age and a way to work on the basic skills together.

My very advanced 10 yr old will occasionally spontaneously write down notes after watching a documentary. She does it for things she wants to remember. But I would never assign something like that to a 10 yr old, either. I see that as more appropriate for middle school or older. 

Learning these skills are long-term goals. They dont all need to mastered when they are little. Building blocks start with a strong but very simple/broad foundation. Orally summarizing a couple key pts at 8 is good. Synthesizing info is a progressive skill.

Edited April 18, 2020 by 8FillTheHeart

[EKS]

If you want to work on note taking, I'd start by making sure that your son is able to write by hand fluently.  In order to take good notes, handwriting needs to be rock solid and as easy as breathing.  I honestly have not yet encountered a teenage boy for whom this is true.  I'm sure they exist, just not in my universe.

I would not have him take notes during a sermon.  In addition to fluent handwriting, taking good notes requires the listener to have good enough comprehension of the material to know what is important and what isn't.  I suspect that a sermon targeted to an adult audience will have many elements that go right over the head of an 8yo.

[forty-two]

In addition to what's been said above, I think there's a difference between taking notes and outlining, especially from an oral source.  For me, taking notes from a lecture/sermon/oral-source means jotting down things that seem pertinent and/or interesting as you go - where the only order is temporal, the order in which things were mentioned.  Whereas outlining is arranging all the points into a *logical* hierarchy - figuring out the main point, the subpoints, and the supporting details, and arranging them into a logical framework.  I don't think you can effectively outline as you go, because how can you know how a given point fits into the whole until you've gone through the whole thing?  Rather, I think it's a two-step process: take notes as you go, and then, afterward, go back through your notes and arrange them into an outline.

But you can do the same thing orally: listen as you go (pausing as needed to discuss), and afterwards discuss it together, everyone telling what stood out to them (or give a summary if they are capable of it) and collectively figuring out what were the important bits and how interesting details fit in.

There's a lot of precursor skills to being able to take notes and outline from oral sources, as well as from sources of length (sermon being medium length, maybe the equivalent of chapter length or essay length).  Notetaking requires fluent handwriting and summarizing ability, as well as the ability to hold a thought in your head long enough to write it down (dictation is a big help with the latter).  Outlining likewise requires fluent summarizing, as well as the ability to see logical connections between ideas (which is why outlining is more of a middle school skill).  SWB's Writing With Ease series, for grades 1-4 (I use it for grades 3-5), does a great job breaking down skills involved in narration (retelling) and summarizing ~2 page passages, as well as the skills involved in holding a thought in your head long enough to to write it down.  And her Writing With Skill series, for grades 6-9 or thereabouts, extends summarizing to longer passages as well as introducing outlining and writing from an outline.  Going through WWE with my kids has taught *me* a lot about summarizing.

~*~

In any case, before starting any outline work with him, I'd recommend you trying out whatever method you are thinking of on yourself, first.  It will give you a chance to figure out trouble spots, give you some experience with what the task is like, make sure the task is practical and doable. 

But I agree with the above posters about saving physical note-taking and outlining till middle school, and instead do oral narrations and discussions.  (Or make it a joint experience: come up with what should go into the notes/outline together and you write it down on a big whiteboard or piece of paper.)  At eight, I'd start with the simplest form of narration, which is just him telling you whatever he remembers or found interesting, in whatever order he chooses.  You could maybe ask him a few questions about what *you've* determined the main point to be, to help guide his attention to the important bits. 

In WWE, SWB starts out with easy comprehension questions about the main parts of the passage, to guide the student's thinking and prime the pump about which bits are worth noticing.  And then she has them narrate.  In Year 1, she just has them tell a few things they liked about the passage for their narration.  Then in Year 2, after the comprehension questions, she asks very specific, targeted questions whose answers form the summary, and then has them give a summary using that guide/priming.  By Year 3, she's phased out the questions - students narrate after the comprehension questions with no initial help; if they falter, then you prime with directed questions.  So instead of pausing the feed to have him identify and write down a key point, maybe instead pause and ask him a few questions that help him see and understand that point.  And at the end he can retell what he remembers or found interesting, and you (and your spouse) can do the same - have an informal discussion.

At age eight, with an adult sermon, you might want to prime him with a few specific, concrete things to listen for.  I know my eight year old (and 11yo) gets more out of the sermon when their Sunday school teachers primed them with a few things to listen for. 

(But fwiw, I don't really expect my kids to listen to the sermon till middle school, when they are doing sermon notes for confirmation.  And those notes aren't the logical, hierarchical I. A. II. A. B., etc., kinds, but instead are thematic.  There are three categories of things to listen for: proclamations of Law, proclamations of Gospel, and how the passage relates to Christ, and at the end they come up with the main point.  So basically, they jot down things that fit each category as they are said, and then at the end figure out the main point, instead of coming up with a complete logical outline of how the sermon fits together.  It took a bit for dd13 (then 12yo) to get comfortable with it; I started by basically telling her whenever something fit one of the categories, and she'd write down what I told her, but eventually she started being able to recognize them herself.  Depending on how your pastor structures his sermons, you might want to match your eventual note-taking, or your personal note-taking, to his structure.)

[wendyroo]

This would not be an appropriate skill for my 8 year old.

He is building foundational skills:
 - He practices taking IEW keyword-outline style notes from short written passages.
 - At other times, he is learning about outlining using the Remedia Press booklet.

My son's next step is going to be combining those skills by organizing his notes into an outline that he can write from. 

For now he is just writing paragraphs, so he could take notes from 2-3 paragraphs about a topic, decide which details he wants to include in his paragraph, organize them in an outline, and then write from that.

My 10 year old has been practicing this year taking Cornell notes from readings.  Now that he has gotten pretty confident doing that, next year he will also be taking them while I read short science chapters out loud to the kids.  I will be deliberately "teaching" the science (showing pictures and diagrams, pausing to emphasize and define vocab words, stopping to see if there are questions, etc) instead of just straight reading so that he can practice taking notes during a lecture.

[73349]

I think it's above the reasonable skill level of an elementary student, but when you are ready to have him try it in the future, it might work best to start with a form.

You might include boxes or lines for the date, speaker, location, text selection, and title or topic; room to write down big ideas or examples; room for any concepts or interesting phrases to think more about or look into more; an area for questions or things he didn't understand; and a place to note any actions he wants to take on this subject.

Previewing the form will help him keep an ear out for the sort of thing that would be worth writing down.