to Study and Review

Effective Notetaking in Class

Note-taking should not be passive, meaning you should NOT just sit there and write.  Active learning is critical!

You need to focus your attention and find a way to make what you are learning interesting… 

This is the best way to help you remember and understand.  

Active note-taking can take many forms, such as writing your notes in your own words, instead of writing exactly what the teacher is saying.  This way you have a better understanding of the material as you have written it yourself.   Writing it in your own words will also allow you to short form your notes and will help you review as you write.

One method to practice active learning and active note taking is the Cornell method.Which can be seen in the image at left.

The summary at the bottom is completed after the class is over. This way you are reviewing your notes and moving the information from short term to long term memory.

Studying with your notes: spend most of your time studying the ideas in the left column and the summary at the bottom since these are the most important ideas and will probably include most of the information that will be tested.

Online Templates

You can create or design templates for notetaking in Google Drive, as well as find them online.

Here are some sources:

https://thegoodocs.com/freebies/notes-template/

https://llc.wrdsb.ca/learning/research-process/note-taking/note-taking-templates/

Here is a Google Slides summary of Notemaking Skills