Stepping Up Your Note-Teaching Game

Taking notes is hard. It’s a skill that takes a lifetime to master. Unfortunately for students all over the world, note-taking is frequently expected but seldom taught.

Educators can play a key role in helping students become proficient, independent note-takers and studiers with some careful planning and instruction in the art of note-taking. We can’t just ask our students to take notes; we have to teach them how.

Here are a few simple strategies tips any teacher can employ to improve at teaching and using note-taking in the classroom.

Have (and communicate) a purpose for note-taking. Taking notes is a worthwhile pursuit if the notes are going to be useful somewhere down the road. If you’re planning to give a review worksheet later that prepares kids for exactly what’s on the test, why should the students take notes at all? The same is true if you plan to give them a copy of the “real” notes later or (worse) if you are only making them take notes to keep them occupied so they don’t throw things and run amok. Before asking students to take notes, consider how those notes will be used and communicate that purpose. Better yet, provide students with an essential question that focuses their note-taking. By encapsulating in one question what you want them to take away from the lecture, reading, video, or whatever, you’re giving students some direction and encouraging them to become discerning learners who can sift through masses of details to figure out what’s important.

Teach your students a variety of note-taking forms and styles. Everyone learns a little differently, and good notes don’t necessarily look the same. The days of rigidly forcing every student to take Cornell Notes have come and gone. And copying teacher-written notes off a PowerPoint is so 1990s it might as well be flannel and grunge. Our students are learners, not medieval monks in the scriptorium. While students are developing note-taking proficiency, it’s not a bad idea to ask them to try out suggested formats or styles. Perhaps a particular type of two- or three-column notes is particularly suited one-day’s note-taking task while tomorrow’s note-taking purpose might lend itself to a mind map or sketchnotes. Filling the students’ toolboxes with a variety of ways to take notes gives them options to meet the purpose and their personal preferences.

Build into your lessons ways for students to interact with their notes. Brain research shows that in order for learning to stick, we have to engage with the content in a variety of ways over time. Assuming students will interact with their notes on their own is like believing that a full box of donuts left in the teacher’s lounge will still be there an hour later. Knowing that, wise teachers incorporate interaction opportunities into their lesson plans. They stop after 10 minutes of lecturing and ask their students to compare their notes side-by-side with a classmate, adding to and clarifying the information. They ask students to write questions about their notes for homework and begin class with an activity in which the questions are shared and discussed. They have students underline main ideas, circle key terms, and chunk their notes prior to a discussion or class activity where the notes are the key to success. On the day before the test, they ask students to mine their notes for key ideas and predict the test questions they will see on the test. As students become accustomed to interacting with their notes in class, they eventually realize the value of processing their thinking and returning to the content multiple times. Ideally, they will soon start practicing note-interaction on their own.

Model your own note-taking. Remember that old tv show where the guy paints a picture in 30 minutes right in front of your very eyes while you attempt to replicate it at home? Aspiring artists can learn techniques and develop skills by observing other artists working and explaining what they are doing. In the same way, teachers can model note-taking for their students while thinking aloud about what they are writing down and how they are doing it. Making the deliberate decisions underlying your note-taking visible to the students builds their capacity to make those decisions themselves. Students may not realize how much is going on inside the head of a proficient note-taker. If students are taking notes on a video or text, take your own notes. When you stop to process, display your notes and allow students to compare theirs with yours. Or project your notes onto a screen as you take them, explaining the thinking behind the note-taking.

Reflect on the notes. We don’t get better at doing something unless we think about what we did and how to improve. If we want our students to improve as note-takers, we have to give them time to reflect on their note-taking: What’s working? What’s not working? How do I plan to improve? My high school humanities freshmen had a notoriously difficult time taking notes on their reading in the college-level AP World History textbook used in the course. Part of my job as the teacher became helping these students—many of whom had never experienced difficulty doing school-related tasks—learn to take effective notes that aided their comprehension and helped them study the content for the class. I developed a note-taking self-quiz with 20 questions students could use to compare their own note-taking and study techniques with those of skilled note-takers. The quiz became a jumping-off point for discussions with the students about refining their practices and setting personal goals for improvement.

Consider what good notes look like in your discipline. The notes I take while reading a novel in English don’t look the same as the ones I take in the same class when I gather information during research. Useful math notes aren’t exactly like useful history notes. We often talk about the idea of standardizing practices across a campus, and that can be a good idea at times. What I think is more useful, however, is for educators to be overt in discussions of disciplinary literacy—to acknowledge that different disciplines have different expectations for reading, writing, and learning. As you are teaching students to read and write like mathematicians, historians, and scientists, also instruct them on how to become effective note-takers in each of those disciplines. Rather than trying to homogenize and streamline everything to make it easier for the students, coach them to become aware of the different learning demands across your campus. Becoming better at discerning what matters in each discipline will make your students more thoughtful readers, more confident and adaptable writers, and more successful independent learners.    

Use your available resources. For those of you who have an AVID account, the new book AVID Writing for Disciplinary Literacy has an entire chapter devoted to implementing Focused Note-Taking with your students, whether you teach at the elementary, secondary, or higher-ed level. It’s a free download on the curriculum page for a limited time. Get your free copy today if you haven’t already.

The time we spend teaching note-taking isn’t a waste. Note-taking is an essential skill for success in college and in the world beyond, and proficiency won’t happen overnight. The investment we make now in equipping our students with lifelong learning skills will pay off down the road as students are able to reach new destinations and steer themselves successfully around the curves and bumps life and learning will put in their way.