The Top 3 Strategies for Note Taking
On Tuesday and Thursdays we have a student who we will call, Paul, who receives in-classroom speech and language services during his English class. We, as the providers, have our go-bag ready with a notebook for note-taking, pens, pencils, highlighters, extra erasers, post-its, etc. We walk into the classroom and see Paul sitting at his desk with his jacket on, backpack zipped, and headphones in his ears. Although Paul is physically in class, we can see that he is not actually ready for class.
We check-in with a few students on our path to Paul so that he does not feel singled out. When we approach Paul, we ask him to take out his notebook and pencil to get ready to take notes. He responds, “I didn’t bring a pencil or paper to school today so I’m just going to sit here.” Here is our reminder why we are providing an in-classroom service. We give Paul a pencil and some lined paper to get him started. After a few moments, we realize Paul needs more support; he is just staring at his paper as the teacher is talking.
Paul is lucky because we are in the classroom with him to provide additional support, but most of the students we see in our therapy room do not always tell us the truth on how they are functioning in the classroom setting. We know we have more than one Paul on our caseload and realized the need to prioritize the importance of note-taking.
Note-taking is a big topic to tackle. Where do you start? We like to ask the students which class they take the most notes in. Different subjects require different types of note-taking. Also, we try to do a check-in with teachers from various subjects to learn about their delivery of information.
The Outline Method
We have found some teachers do straight lectures, so teaching the students to utilize an outline would be most beneficial. The Outline method organizes information in a highly structured and logical manner that eventually acts as a study guide when preparing for tests. We tell our students if you take notes the right way then all you need to do is review those same notes for the upcoming exams. Below is an Outline completed by one of our students.
The Mapping Method
Some teachers organize their lessons utilizing more of an oral discussion, so the mapping method of note taking might be easier. This method allows students to quickly jot down key words that can relate each fact or idea to every other fact or idea utilizing arrows. Many students find it to be a more fun way of note taking since it appears to be less structured than the Outline Method and Cornell Note Taking Method. Below is a sample from one of our students using the Mapping Method.
The Cornell Note Taking Method
Our usual go-to note-taking strategy has become Cornell Notes. We have found this strategy can really work with most teaching styles because the template can be versatile. Below we will show you two different versions of how we like to use this strategy with our students.
Version 1. The left side is meant for keywords and the right side of the page is for more detailed information that connects to the keywords on the left side. The bottom section is where the students define unknown vocabulary words or write down questions that come to mind during the class period.
Version 2. The right side is where the student writes down the notes or keywords from the lecture. Then once they have finished, they go home, look at their notes, and generate questions on the left side that goes with the information they wrote on the right side. This provides students with the opportunity to reread their notes and start turning the new information from short term memory into long term memory for when they need to start studying for an exam.
With any note-taking graphic organizer that you introduce to your students, they need practice when they are not in the classroom. When targeting note-taking in our speech and language sessions, we like to use high-interest, short, non-fiction video clips. These high-interest video clips keep our students motivated and interested when we are teaching them this new skill.
Now, back to Paul who is just sitting in the classroom, probably everyday, not writing anything down. Since we are in the classroom and have access to the teacher regularly, we can create an individualized note-taking template. This will help Paul get started when class starts because it will be aligned with the teachers daily expectations. Look below to see the template we created for Paul for his English class. Notice that he needed to write the date and “Aim” on the top as well as complete the daily “Do-Now”. The note-taking portion of the template for Paul needed to have lines as his notes were primarily completed in an outline format. If the teacher utilized tables and venn diagrams, we would have left the note-taking part blank to allow the student the space to copy down those types of visuals.
After a few weeks of using this template, we saw a big change with Paul. He now takes out his notes and pencil everyday and gets started without prompting. Our future goal for Paul would be for him to learn a variety of graphic organizers for note-taking so he can take notes in all of his classes, not just English.
How do you support your students’ note-taking skills in the classroom?
