Question or Topic: 

“We would like to focus on note taking strategies.  Students have a difficult time identifying important information.  We have used various graphic organizers to help structure note taking, and we would like to learn about strategies that would move students transition from graphic organizers. We provide students with note taking strategies that individual students can utilize that is best for them as individual learners.” 

What:

“Note Taking” versus “Note Making”

• Note Taking - Note-taking refers to the process of writing down or recording the main key points of information. For instance, if you are a student, you might be taking down discussion notes or lecture notes, which might serve you as a study aid later. In note-taking, it is possible to see different note-taking practices. Outlining is one of the most frequently used note-taking methods, where the note taker quickly grabs the main points and creates a piece of content in bullet points. Guided notes are another note-taking method where the teacher provides the required templates for the students to take their individual notes. However, compared to note making, the main issue in note-taking is that note-taking usually happens while we are listening, and the objective is to grab the key points quickly and note them down as we hear them in order to refer back to them later. We often use the original author’s language as it’s easier. But this can result in poor comprehension of the notes when we refer back to them later, and it is possible that we might easily forget the content.

• Note Making - Note-making involves the process of reviewing, combining, and synthesizing ideas you hear or read. In contrast to note-taking, note-making is a relatively slow process that involves more of our own language rather than someone else’s language. Consequently, the content produced in note-making is easier to comprehend and remember.

When we are note-making while reading, we deliberately structure a personal version of what we read. This allows us to remember 

the information better as it is actively created from our own minds. Therefore, taking time and making enough effort to reword and 

build the content we are reading allows the information to be absorbed into our long-term memory.

Why:

Whether it’s taking notes from lectures (Kiewra, 2002) or from reading (Rahmani & Sadeghi, 2011; Chang & Ku, 2014), note-taking has been shown to improve student learning. In other words, if we want our students to remember more of what they learn in our classes, it’s better to have them take notes than it is to not have them take notes.

The thinking behind this is that note-making requires effort. Rather than passively taking information in, the act of encoding the information into words or pictures forms new pathways in the brain, which stores it more firmly in long-term memory. On top of that, having the information stored in a new place gives students the opportunity to revisit it later and reinforce the learning that happened the first time around.

How/Resources:

• History Note Taking Tips and Tricks - Papermate

• Two-Column Note-Taking - Facing History and Ourselves

• Sketchnotes in History Class - Brent Pillsbury &  Sketchnoting in the Classroom - Verbal to Visual 

• Note-taking: A Research Roundup - Cult of Pedagogy