This hierarchical outlining tool allows students to organize up to five levels of information for reading and writing activities. During or after reading, the Notetaker can be used to compile and organize reading notes, research, and related ideas. During the writing process, students can use the tool to organize their information and plan texts in the prewriting stage and to review and structure their ideas during writing and revision.

Students can choose the format that the outline will use (e.g., bullets, Roman numerals, letters) as well as enter up to five levels of information. The Notetaker includes a tutorial, which demonstrates how to use the tool, as well as a Notes area where students can track information that does not fit into the outline. The Notetaker creates an HTML file of students’ outlines, which can be printed or saved and edited later in any HTML editor.

Visit this interactive tool at: http://interactives.mped.org/notetaker722.aspx.

ReadWriteThink Lessons That Use This Tool

All’s Well that Sells Well: A Creative Introduction to Shakespeare (9-12)
This pre-reading activity for Romeo and Juliet or any other play by William Shakespeare compares attending a performance at The Globe Theater to viewing a play on Broadway or seeing a movie at a local theater. It invokes critical inquiry and promotes engagement as students complete a project that contrasts life in the 1600s with products and conveniences available today.

Analyzing and Comparing Medieval and Modern Ballads (9-12)
Invite students to explore the genre of ballads by reading medieval ballads to deduce their characteristics, acting out the ballads, comparing the medieval and modern ballads using Venn diagrams, and ultimately composing their own ballads.

Analyzing Grammar Pet Peeves (9-12)
This lesson uses a Dear Abby column to help students analyze a “grammar rant.” Through their analysis of Dear Abby’s grammar pet peeves, students become aware of the ranter’s language biases and gain an understanding of how race, class, and audience’s expectations help determine what is considered acceptable language use.

Audio Broadcasts and Podcasts: Oral Storytelling and Dramatization (9-12)
Audio broadcasts provide an individualized experience for listeners, who create mental images to accompany the words and sounds they hear. Orson Welles’ broadcast of H. G. Wells’ War of the Worlds in October 1938 provides perhaps the most well-known example of listeners’ imaginations leading to a very vivid experience. After exploring Welles’ broadcast, students create criteria for effective audio dramatizations and then compose their own dramatization of a scene from a recent reading.

Audio Listening Practices: Exploring Personal Experiences with Audio Texts (9-12)
This lesson plan asks students to explore the ways that audio texts play a role in their lives. Students keep a daily diary that records how and when they listen to audio texts, such as radio, streaming media, songs on MP3 players, and podcasts. Students then analyze the details and compare their results to published reports on American radio listeners. They conclude by reflecting on their findings and writing a final statement on their audio literacy practices and interests.

Becoming History Detectives Using Shakespeare’s Secret  (6-8)
Students read the contemporary mystery Shakespeare’s Secret by Elise Broach and discover how the author’s liberal use of historical details enhances the story and can inspire further exploration of historical facts and the creation of a short dramatic skit.

Blogtopia: Blogging about Your Own Utopia (9-12)
Students work together to create their own utopias, using blogs as the primary source of publication.

Blurring Genre: Exploring Fiction and Nonfiction with Diary of a Worm (6-8)
Students often believe that fiction writers make everything up, seldom realizing how research is incorporated into entertaining writing. They may believe that research only applies to school writing. In this lesson, students incorporate facts into a variety of text types, creating a class book similar to Diary of a Worm.

Connecting Past and Present: A Local Research Project (9-12)
Students connect to their school’s history by researching one decade of the school’s past. Through their research, students will become archivists, gathering photos, artifacts, and stories. As a culminating activity, students create museum exhibits displaying all the found items for their decade.

Constructing New Understanding Through Choral Readings of Shakespeare (9-12)
After reading The Tempest or any other play by William Shakespeare, students work in small groups to plan, compose, and perform a choral reading based on a character or theme.

Copyright Law: From Digital Reprints to Downloads (6-8)
In this lesson, students look briefly at the history of copyright law and generalize about how and why it has changed over time. Students then apply this information to recent copyright issues, look at these issues from the perspective of a particular group, and create persuasive arguments to convince others to see the issue from their perspective.

Creative Outlining—From Freewriting to Formalizing (9-12)
In this lesson students respond to a short story by freewriting. They then determine a thesis idea for a literary analysis essay from their body of freewriting and create an outline for an original essay.

Designing Effective Poster Presentations (9-12)
Students explore the genre of posters, review informational writing and visual design, and then design poster presentations to share in class or at a school-wide fair.

Family Memoir: Getting Acquainted With Generations Before Us (9-12)
Creating a memoir of a family member who is at least a generation older than they are allows students both to learn more about their own backgrounds and to learn the power of storytellers. After all, memoirs are at least as much about the writer as they are about the subject.

Gaining Background for the Graphic Novel Persepolis: A WebQuest on Iran (9-12)
To prepare students for reading the graphic novel Persepolis, this lesson uses a WebQuest to focus students’ research efforts on finding reliable information about Iran before and during the Islamic Revolution. In groups, students research and then present information on aspects of Iran such as politics, religion, and culture.

Searching for Gold: A Collaborative Inquiry Project (3-5)
In this collaborative inquiry activity, the real gold is the inquiry skills and content area knowledge that students develop. Students study the Gold Rush using a collaborative inquiry strategy: each of several small groups research one aspect of the topic and teach that topic to the rest of the class. Students create a project to aid in their oral presentation of their researched topic.

Speaking Poetry: Exploring Sonic Patterns Through Performance (9-12)
Using their voices as interpretive instruments, students will gain a deeper appreciation of the art of poetry as they prepare a recitation of the frequently anthologized poem “Those Winter Sundays.”

Writing about Writing: An Extended Metaphor Assignment (9-12)
Using Richard Wilbur’s poem “The Writer” as an inspiration, students examine the literary element of metaphor then write their own extended metaphor, describing themselves as writers.