Use of Information

Note taking forms

Sometimes students really benefit from a structured note taking form. Here are some examples:

Note taking chart

Note taking slides

Note taking table

WWWWWH note taking form

Putting notes into your own words

We always tell students to put their notes in their own words. This is much easier said than done. One strategy you can use is to have students partner up. When they find information for their notes, they close their book or laptop, turn to their partner, and tell their partner what they learned. Then the partner writes that information down.

Important vocabulary

When students are researching a topic, there are probably terms or words that a person needs to understand in order to understand the topic. As students are researching, they should look for those important words and write down a definition. This helps them understand their topic better.

Main Idea & Details

Note taking is closely related to the ELA skill of identifying the main idea and supporting details (RI.2). So remind students of strategies that you have already taught them for this skill.

• RI4.2 Comprehension Bucket

• RI5.2 Comprehension Bucket

• RI6.2 Comprehension Bucket

Citations

Students need to keep track of where they are finding information, so they can cite their sources. My note-taking forms above all have places where students can do this.

• Typically, we ask fourth graders to cite sources by just writing down the title and author of books and the title of websites and the URL.

• In fifth grade, we start to encourage students to use full citations (MLA style).

• Sixth graders should definitely be using full citations.

One of the benefits of Britannica and Explora is that they provide a full citation. Students simply need to copy and paste it. When students are using a website that they found via Google, they will have to construct their own citation. The OSLIS Citation Maker is a helpful tool for this.