Overview: Why Take Notes?
Taking notes is an essential part of school life, especially in high school and college. In addition, many jobs and careers require on the job training and staff meetings. Writing down main ideas is an important way to help remember those points, whether in school or on the job.
Organize the Paper Before Taking Notes
The process is similar for reading articles and taking notes for main ideas, or for listening to a school lecture or a training module. Students may recognize it as the Cornell method of taking notes. Writing and reviewing notes this way can make study time much more efficient. Organize the page with a large margin on the left-hand side, by drawing a line with a ruler or the edge of a textbook. Paper is available with the lines already marked in some college bookstores, but it’s cheaper to draw the lines on regular paper.
Read or Listen Closely for Main Points
Now the student is ready to take notes for main ideas. While reading the content article, write down any headings and the main ideas contained in topic sentences. Make sure to add any facts that need to be remembered, such as a process or unfamiliar vocabulary. Use the right side of the page and leave the left hand large margin blank for now. The process is similar while listening to a lecture. Often the teacher or supervisor will write an outline to follow on the board, and those will be the main points of the lecture. If they do not, students will need to listen closely for the main points, which are often signaled by statements like “Today we will talk about…”; “The main points to remember are…”; and “The first step in the process is…”. Don’t worry while taking notes about organizing them, just about getting down what needs to be remembered. That will be done when reading over the notes to review them.
Review while Main Points are Still Fresh
The purpose of the review process, done as soon after the lecture is finished or the chapter is read, is to mark and organize the lecture while it is still memorable. Take a few minutes at the end of the lecture if one has a free study period or the end of the day. Now it is time to use that left-hand margin to summarize what is important and to check for understanding of those main ideas. At the end of the lecture or chapter, the student has learned something about the process or procedure and can outline the main ideas to use as a study aid.
Notes Help the Learning Process
Remembering the main ideas in an article or lecture is the reverse of that process, and is a strategy to check for understanding. If when students are reviewing, there is something in notes that doesn’t make sense, or a step in the training process that is unclear, it’s a starting point to ask the teacher or trainer questions. It’s also a valuable aid in learning the material, and taking tests on it.
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