I analyse the notes of a group of first year engineering students who attended a course in precalculus mathematics. Being interested in verbalisation skills at the beginning of university, I adopt a narrative lens to analyse the notes: I see a lecture as a story being told by the teacher and the students’ notes as re-tellings of the teacher’s story. I focus on the way the students condense the mathematical content in their written notes in two distinct teaching formats: a traditional frontal
lesson and the concluding phase of a classroom discussion after a small group activity
