Teach your students how to take notes that work
November 7, 2008
I’m taking a professional development class at UNC this semester. On campus, I’m amazed at the beauty of the campus, how young the students look, and how I’ve completely forgotten how to take notes in class. I didn’t really notice this until I reviewed for our midterm exam and saw that I’d confused “taking notes” with “writing down the stuff on the teacher’s PowerPoint slides.” Half my notes made no sense out of the context of class — just as well, though, as I can’t read my own handwriting most of the time anyway.
As a teacher, don’t take for granted that your students know how to take notes properly. They may want to read Advice for Students: Taking Notes that Work, a post from Dustin Wax at Stepcase Lifehack. This post offers students tips like not cluttering up their notes with stuff they already know, such as that the Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776, or that ninjas are awesomer than pirates. Wax also talks about several note-taking techniques like mind-mapping, or the Cornell Notes system, which we’ve addressed before.
Even your good note-takers could benefit from seeing alternative ways of capturing information. Though I ended up with a “B” on my midterm, your faithful author could stand to brush up on his note-taking as well. -BILL FERRIS
