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.

If I Had a Hammer

A hammer is a useful thing to know how to use. If you gave me a claw hammer and taught me to use it, I could do a lot of things: hang a picture, nail together a couple of boards, pry a nail out of something. Once I learned how to use a claw hammer, I might be able to figure out how to use other types of hammers—ball peen hammers, club hammers, sledge hammers—which would enable me to accomplish many more tasks.

As I added hammers to my toolbox, it would be useful to know what each is used for, its strengths and weaknesses, so if a hammering task arose, I could select the best hammer for the job.

But what if I needed to cut a 2x4 in half?

A hammer won’t be of any use in this situation. I would also need access to and understanding of saws—miter, jig, band, hack, hand, circular—so I would know which one would best meet my need.

A toolbox with only one tool in it isn’t much use. Having many tools but no knowledge of how and when to use them is equally useless. Likewise, if I never build anything myself, what’s the use of having tools at all?

These three points relate to much of what we do in the classroom. As we try to equip our students with what they need to accomplish our learning objectives, we have to consider these truths. 

A toolbox with only one tool in it isn’t much use. Sometimes we give our students a tool or strategy, hoping to help them but inadvertently limiting them. In writing, for instance, we might give students an organizational structure or template for writing an essay. When reading, we might provide them with a set of steps for annotating a text. For note-taking, we might teach them a format—Cornell Notes, for instance. Each of these tools is useful and worthwhile in some situations, but when we try to force every student to use the same tool in all circumstances, problems arise. A far better idea is to provide students with several strategies, multiple tools for their academic toolbox. There are many acceptable ways to organize almost any essay. Good readers use a number of annotation strategies to make sense of what they read. And sometimes two- or three-column notes, sketchnotes, graphic organizers, and traditional outlines are more useful than Cornell Notes for certain purposes.  

Having many tools but no knowledge of how and when to use them is equally useless. Suppose we fill our students’ toolboxes with strategies but don’t teach them what to do with them. Suppose we make all the decisions—use this tool for this and this one for this—rather than asking our students to select among a variety of tools and defend their decision. We should share with students the pros and cons of each tool as we introduce it and later let the students decide which to use for whatever task is at hand. I’m a believer that classrooms need to be full of strategic discussions: developing plans, testing hypotheses, creating blueprints for learning, and debriefing often. The teacher can’t be the one doing all the strategizing, though. When students develop the autonomy to determine which organizational structure matches what they have to say in their essay, which annotation method will work best for the type of text and purpose for reading, and which note-taking format will help them achieve their objective for taking notes, they have become independent learners who can handle whatever challenges the world of college or career throws at them. They are master craftsmen and craftswomen who can take charge of their own learning.  

If I never build anything myself, what’s the use of having tools at all? It’s sad when kids know how to take notes but never need to take them. It’s equally unfortunate to have reading skills but nothing to read, writing skills with no opportunity to try them out on real-world audiences. We need to make sure the tools we give our students are going to be used. With the best of intentions, we often circumvent the actual development of students’ skills by shouldering most of the cognitive work ourselves. We provide fill-in-the-blank essay templates for students who don’t need them. Or we decide not to assign writing at all. We summarize reading instead of asking students to work their way through it; equally shameful, we give study questions and reading guides that students can answer without having to actually read the text. We ask students to take notes for the sake of taking notes rather than taking notes that are necessary to accomplish a learning objective. It’s our obligation to provide students with reasons to use the tools we teach them, to give them something to build with those tools.

With some deliberate planning, we can become educators who equip our students with the right tools, teach them how and when to use them, and then give them reasons to dig into their toolboxes. Before we know it, our students will become handy in ways we never imagined, thinking of new things to build and collecting additional tools on their own to help them build them.