Handouts
Preparing Handouts. I have spent time preparing handouts for students on procedures and note’s, to save time in class, only to find some of them left behind. This makes me wonder if they even read them. Now I make them copy all notes from the board to make sure they process the information and I feel I get better results.
I believe the students retains the information better when they take notes during the presentation rather than follow the presentation in a handout.
I have founda lot of handouts in the trash.
I no longer use them, I use board notes in bullet point format. I use questioning to get the answers I want the students to know and put them on the board in bullet points for the students to copy. I will often use simple drawings to make a point, by simple I mean that most students can also draw them with out any art skill.
A handout is good as long as it is relavent to the material being covered. In order for a handout to be useful, it must reinforce what is being taught and above all, be interesting! Also if the handout is something you have copied from somewhere as opposed to being created by yourself, be very careful of any copywrite problems that you may encounter.
I prefer handouts when the information contained within is something that many to most students, 40% as a numerical minimum is my guideline, understand they will need beyond the class.
If half are wasted... so be it, as a delivery system they are still worth it in terms of time and value of the ink and paper. You do not need to keep a newspaper as an heirloom to have been affected, for a lifetime, by a given headline on a given occasion.
If the content of a handout is information that the posession of which may enhance the lives and ongoing studies of the students, and at least 40% of the students will recognise this, I believe that they are worth preparing and using.
i like the idea of making them copy most of the notes down; partly because i had to when i was a student. ok, not really, i honestly believe they get more out of it if they have to do a lot of the work. just handing them a copy of the notes isn't going to do anything for them. i still make copies of certain things, but it's almost more of an extra peice to go along with what we have covered and sometimes it depends on if the students show any interest.
Handouts can be tricky. They can be time-consuming for teachers to provide and I applaud you for not feeling "obligated" to supply them, especially when you suspected they were not being valued by your students.
The popularity of power-point presentations has really changed things for teacher, for good and for bad. Some schools require such handouts, and students can become rather spoiled. If I do a powerpoint I like to print the 6 slides to a page format and I've had students complain--they want the 3 slides per page with the lines for notes! I always explain that I love trees and want to conserve resources as much as possible. Handouts are a gift, not a given.
