 How To Survive In School: Note-Taking Skills • Program Objectives a) To Teach students to be more effective in classroom note-taking; b) To show students the importance of organizing information; c) To show students various note-taking methods; d) To provide students with practice in taking notes in both listening and reading situations. o Tips on Note Taking and Outlining It may be helpful to discuss the following information with students before they view the program: a) Question: A good note taker is someone who: a) writes down every word; b) uses a tape recorder; c) listens more than he/she writes; d) listens half the time and writes the other half. Note to teacher: If your students answered a, b, or d, this program is for them. Actually, they may be happy to learn that in a lecture, the ratio of listening to writing should be 90-10. b) Some reasons for taking notes in class are: • Organized notes will help you recognize the core of important ideas. • Notes provide a permanent record to help you learn and remember later. • The underlying organization and purpose of a lecture will become clear through note taking. • The lecture may contain information not available anywhere else. Discuss these reasons in class. c) One note-taking skill is the ability to write down important facts quickly and accurately. Here are some hints about the mechanics of note taking. a) Set up each page in an orderly format; label the top of the page with the date, course and topic of the lecture or reading. b) Split the page in half; take notes only in the right half. The large left-hand margin will come in handy later for organizing your notes or making additions and corrections. c) Take notes in your own words. By doing this, you are simultaneously reducing information and putting it into terms which are easier to understand. d) Never use full sentences. Eliminate unnecessary words such as a, an, the. e) Don’t erase a mistake. Draw a single line through the material. This saves time and you may discover later that you want the material. f) Emphasize important words: underline, capitalize, circle, box and draw arrows. g) Abbreviate as much as possible. Create your own form of shorthand or code system. d) Taking down every word you read or hear is not an effective note-taking (or outlining) technique. One way of developing the ability to get down only the most important ideas is to anticipate. In a lecture, for example, try to be one step ahead of the lecturer by asking yourself questions about the material before it is presented. For instance, if the title of the lecture is "The Lost Empire of the Incas," you might ask questions such as: Who were the Incas? Where did they live? How long did the Empire exist? Why did it collapse? Your notes can then consist of answers to these questions. e) One way of determining the most important information in a lecture is to pay attention to the way in which it is presented. For example, some teachers use word signals to indicate that an important idea is coming up. Word clues include phrases such as: "a major development"; "it is essential for you to know"; "remember that…" Some teachers uses facial gestures or body movements when they are making an important point. With your teacher’s permission, discuss some of the word signals or body signals he/she uses. In the next lecture, use these clues to pick out the important ideas. f) In reading assignments, there is so much information that determining what is important and unimportant may be the difference between confusing notes (or outlines) and orderly ones. Knowing how to read your textbook effectively is crucial to your note-taking (and outlining) skills. Before beginning to read, you should survey the chapter you are about to read. To survey: • Read the chapter title and think about what it means. • Read the chapter headings and subheadings. • Read the summary. • Read picture captions, charts and illustrations. • Check the bibliography. • Summary of Content—Part One Good note taking skills can help us make sense of the material we receive in school; we can condense large quantities of it for easy learning. Perhaps the easiest kind of note taking is copying things down word for word—like definitions from geometry. Most note taking, however, requires more than just copying down ideas. Organizing them is the most important skill of note taking. One method of organization is called a simple list—just listing a set of ideas a teacher is trying to provide in a lecture. A second method of organization is the chronological list in which ideas have to be listed in the exact order in which they occur. This form of note taking is especially useful for certain types of history and English lectures. • Summary of Content—Part Two Different methods of note taking are useful in different situations. Cause and effect and compare and contrast are two more of the most common methods. Cause and effect is a third method of note taking, which often works when a teacher is trying to explain why things happen or what causes them to happen. Audio exercise three—"Causes of High American Divorce Rate"—gives students practice in cause and effect. A fourth method of note taking is compare and contrast, which is useful when teachers are pointing out the similarities and differences and differences between two things. Students practice compare and contrast in audio exercise four, which describes "The Attitudes of College Students in the Late 60’s and Mid-70’s." Many lectures contain more than one kind of material. They’re a combination of simple lists, chronological lists, cause and effect, compare and contrast. As a result, different note-talking methods have to be used for different parts of the lecture. As a final exercise, students are asked to take notes on a lecture about "American Collectors." • Summary of Content—Part Three PAGE 48 Once students master these basic skills of note taking and outlining, survival in school should become a much easier task. A major portion of the material students are exposed to in school attempts to explain the causes of certain events, phenomena, actions. Information such as the causes of the rise of Rome, for example, would logically organize into a cause and effect outline. The title is "Causes for the Rise of Rome." The four major causes—Roman army, Roman values, Roman practical genius, Roman leaders—are indicated by Roman numerals; the explanation of these causes is in capital letters. In audio exercise three, "Reasons People Have Children," students practice organizing their notes into a cause and effect outline. Notes which organize into a compare and contrast outline form probably deal with material which describes the differences and similarities between two subjects—two classic kinds of furniture, for example. In this particular outline, there are two Roman numerals—Similarities and Differences. The capital letters describe these similarities and differences in detail. Since most schoolwork consists of many types of information, student notes usually are composed of various outline methods—simple lists, chronological lists, cause and effect, comparison and contrast. • Summary of Content—Part Three Outlining is another form of note taking which is useful for organizing large quantities of material like the information in textbooks or outside reading. Textbook chapters are often broken down into main ideas which have headings written in big print. These headings become the Roman numerals of an outline. Students are given headings from a chapter on the French Revolution and asked to organize these headings into outline form. The main ideas in each chapter are often broken down into smaller units or supporting ideas. These become capital letters under the Roman numerals in an outline. After looking at the main and supporting ideas from a chapter on journalism, students are asked to organize these into outline form. • Summary of Content—Part Four Material that is not neatly broken into chapters requires more attention. Students must analyze the materials presented and choose the most important details for their notes and outlines. In all textbook chapters, the supporting ideas are usually further explained by some important additional information. This information becomes 1, 2, etc. under the capital letters. A textbook chapter on ants gives students an opportunity to set up an outline which includes main ideas, supporting ideas and important additional information. Frequently students have to outline material that’s not neatly broken down the way a textbook chapter is. They then have to pick out the main ideas, supporting ideas and additional information. Students practice this process in exercises on old age, American film spectaculars and the American family. • Summary of Content—Part Five Taking notes and organizing them into outline form is basic to school survival. Whatever the learning situation—reading assignments or classroom lectures—student’s notes will help them remember and learn. Remembering and subsequently learning any new material would be almost impossible without notes. Although a course in Basic Sailing may not be part of the curriculum, the problems facing a "green sailor"—that of learning the different kinds of sails—are similar to those any student faces in dealing with a new subject. Students are shown the outline theoretically prepared from the sailor’s simple list of sails. A step-by-step explanation helps them understand the major breakdown of information: the title "Sails on a Sloop"; the three main ideas—three different kinds of sails—represented by Roman numerals; the supporting ideas—the three different kinds of jobs—represented by capital letters; the important information listed with Arabic numerals. While some material is organized into simple-list outlines, some—notably history—may be organized chronologically, or in a specific order of time. In cases such as these, notes should be put into a chronological outline. Students listen to an account of the events leading up to the firing on Fort Sumter. In the step-by-step explanation which follows, students learn how to organize the title, major events and supporting information into a chronological outline form. • Summary of Content—Part Six Once students master these basic skills of note taking and outlining, survival in school should become a much easier task. A major portion of the material students are exposed to in school attempts to explain the causes of certain events, phenomena, actions. Information such as the causes of the rise of Rome, for example, would logically organize into a cause and effect outline. The title is "Causes for the Rise of Rome." The four major causes—Roman army, Roman values, Roman practical genius, Roman leaders—are indicated by Roman numerals; the explanation of these causes is in capital letters. Notes which organize into a compare and contrast outline form probably deal with material which describes the differences and similarities between two subjects—two classic kinds of furniture, for example. In this particular outline, there are two Roman numerals—Similarities and Differences. The capital letters describe these similarities and differences in detail. Since most schoolwork consists of many types of information, student notes usually are composed of various outline methods—simple lists, chronological lists, cause and effect, comparison and contrast. • Follow-Up Exercises 1. Ask students to organize the following word list into an outline form: South America, Africa, Argentina, Brazil, Europe, Western Hemisphere, Canada, North America, Arizona, United States, Columbia, Asia, Eastern Hemisphere. 2. Ask students to organize the following word list into an outline form: Rhinoceros, ostrich, gopher, goldfish, bass, Hummingbird, whale, falcon, mouse chipmunk, bat. Note: In this exercise, students must supply their own headings. 3. Note taking requires review if it is to be effective. Notes should be reviewed immediately after class, or as soon as possible, to be sure they are: a) Readable: Clean up your notes. Write out abbreviations, illegible words, and unfinished sentences. Make them readable while they are fresh in your mind. You may not look at them again for a while and the next time, you may not be able to read or understand them. b) Clear: Add comments to make notes clearer. Fill in details, add examples. Mark important ideas for emphasis. Add a summary. c) Organize: Arrange notes into lists, columns, compare/contrast, cause/effect or outline form to make them better organized. Practice these suggested review skills. Reread, organize and revise a section of your own notes. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of doing so. 4. Basically, there are five steps in the note-taking or outlining process: a) Preview: Preparation for taking notes. Before you go to class, or before you begin reading an assignment, think about all the things you already know about the subject. b) Select: Write down only the most important ideas. Listen to everything, but don’t try to copy it all. Search for the core of the material. c) Question: Be one step ahead of the teacher or text. By asking questions, you can focus in on the most important ideas. d) Organize: Put your notes into understandable patterns (simple list, chronological lists, cause/effect, compare/contrast, outline). Organized notes are easier to remember and provide more help in studying. This is the most important step in the note-taking process. e) Review: Reread and revise your notes shortly after they have been taken. Divide the class into two groups. For a full week, students who want to should take notes using the five steps. The remaining students may take notes any way they want. At the end of the week, give a short quiz. See which group learned and remembered the most, without studying. 5. One method of note taking involves creating a word or sentence that you can easily remember. The word or sentence—called an acronym—represents a series of items in a particular order. For example, EGBDF represents the notes on the lines in a musical staff. Some people remember the order by using the sentence Every Good Boy Does Fine. What are some acronyms you’ve used? Do you find them an effective note-taking method? 6. Words and sentences operate and interact with each other. Being able to determine these relationships will help you outline your notes in a logical manner. Discuss the following relationships and list signal words for each. a) Order, Sequence Some words are clues to the order or time when things happen. The events can be numbered; words like first, second, next and last can help you keep sequence in mind. Time relationships are often essential in understanding the process in any given subject. Some words that signal this relationship are then, last, before, after, later, finally, while, as, in the meantime, during, simultaneously. b) Order, Rank The same words, which indicate time relationships, can also be used to denote the order rank of items: first—most important; second—next in importance and so on. c) Causes Reasons are frequently signaled by the words because and since. Reasons are listed; then, a conclusion is drawn. The expression as a result sums up the listed reasons. Some words that signal causes are therefore, thus, consequently, from this, it can be inferred. d) Contrast Words such as however, but, despite are clues to the contrasting relationship between the ideas previously expressed and ideas soon to be expressed. They also serve as clues to opposing comments. Some other words that express contrast are nevertheless, although, on the other hand. e) Former, Latter When two items are mentioned and later referred to, former means the items first mentioned, latter means the item last referred to. 7. Charts and tables include lots of information. They provide numerical information, dates, names and a variety of other data in a brief, easily handled form. Study and discuss a chart or table from one of your textbooks. Do you think this material could be organized in a more efficient manner? 8. Pictures which translate words of a text into dramatic, concrete illustrations are useful note-taking devices. Create a cartoon, draw a diagram or construct a graph which clarifies a particularly difficult idea. Discuss in class. 9. School is a place where knowledge is transferred from the notebook of the professor to the notebook of the student—without going through the mind of either. Discuss this saying with regard to your own school experiences. 10. With respect to your study habits, list your weak and strong points. Some areas to keep in mind are: study environment, physical condition, time management, power of concentration, ability to remember, attitude toward study, condition of notes. In class, discuss whether any of your classmates can offer suggestions for improving your weaker habits. 11. Some students find preparing a study time schedule and keeping to it a useful tool. Make a weekly activity record with columns for each day of the week. a. Write in times for: 1. sleep 2. meals 3. personal care 4. set or fixed activities (classes, chores, part-time job) b. Write your schedule for home study: 1. Schedule each subject separately. 2. Schedule the longest amount of time for your hardest subject and schedule a time when your energy level is the highest. 3. Vary your subjects. 4. Give yourself enough time. c. Fill in recreation and exercise activities. 12. Concentration—controlling, directing and sustaining attention—is a potent aid to better learning. To concentrate effectively, you should have definite times and places to study on a regular basis with a minimum of interference. How many of the following distractions interfere with your concentration: a. noise b. strong light c. conversations d. fatigue e. eyestrain f. overeating g. wandering thoughts Trying to eliminate external distractions may prove easier than keeping your mind in check. One way to keep your thoughts in focus is to maintain a record of the number of times your mind strays, then try to cut that number down each time you study. Discuss other methods to improve concentration: reading or listening with a critical or questioning attitude, understanding the material, varying your study subjects, working under time limits. 13. Developing a good memory is important in any learning situation. There are good and bad ways to memorize. Here are some suggestions for going about it the right way. a. Comprehend completely whatever you are trying to remember. b. Associate new ideas with already known or familiar ideas. c. Fit your new ideas together into a logical unit. d. Reread and recite. e. Take extra pains when you first learn new material f. Distribute your efforts. For example, instead of 1 hour of straight study, you might use three 20-minute periods with a break between each. Apply these methods to your studying for a week. Do you think the suggestions are valid? Discuss. |
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