It seems that it would be easy to write down stuff in class. That learning how to take notes would be a waste of time. However, the opposite is true. If you learn how to take notes effectively and efficiently, you’ll save yourself hours of study time just by observing a few simple tricks. More Study Skills of Successful Students Difficulty: Easy Time Required: One Class Period
Here's How: 1. Choose Appropriate Paper The right paper can mean the difference between complete frustration in class and organized notes. To take notes effectively, choose a sheet of loose, clean, lined paper, preferably college-ruled. There are a couple reasons for this choice:
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Choosing loose paper to take notes allows you to rearrange your notes in a binder if necessary, lend them easily to a friend, and remove and replace a page if it gets damaged. Using college-ruled paper means that the spaces between the lines are smaller, allowing you to write more per page, which is advantageous when you’re studying a lot of material. It won’t seem as much, and thus, as overwhelming.
2. Use Pencil and Skip Lines
Nothing will make you more frustrated than taking notes and having to draw arrows from new content to a related idea your teacher was talking about 20 minutes ago. That’s why it’s important to skip lines. If your teacher brings up something new, you’ll have a place to squeeze it in. And, if you take your notes in pencil, your notes will stay neat if you make a mistake and you won’t have to rewrite everything just to make sense of the lecture.
3. Label Your Page You don’t have to use a clean sheet of paper for every new note-taking session if you use appropriate labels. Start with the topic of the discussion (for study purposes later), fill in the date, class, chapters associated with the notes and teacher’s name. At the end of your notes for the day, draw a line crossing the page so you’ll have a very clear demarcation of each day’s notes. During the next lecture, use same format so your binder is consistent.
4. Use an Organizational System Speaking of organization, use one in your notes. Many people use an outline (I.II.III. A.B.C. 1.2.3.) but you can use circles or stars or whatever symbols you'd like, as long as you stay consistent. If your teacher is scattered and doesn’t really lecture in that format, then just organize new ideas with numbers, so you don’t get one long paragraph of loosely-related content.
5. Listen for Importance Some of the stuff your teacher says is irrelevant, but much of it needs remembering. So how do you decipher what to put down in your notes and what to disregard? Listen for importance by picking up dates, new terms or vocabulary, concepts, names, and explanations of ideas. If
your teacher writes it down anywhere, he or she wants you to know it. If she talks about it for 15 minutes, she’s gonna quiz you on it. If he repeats it several times in the lecture, you’re responsible.
6. Put Content Into Your Own Words Learning how to take notes begins with learning how to paraphrase and summarize. You will learn new material better if you put it into your own words. When your teacher waxes wordy about Leningrad for 25 minutes, summarize the main idea into a few sentences you’ll be able to remember. If you try to write everything down word for word, you’ll miss stuff, and confuse yourself. Listen attentively, then write.
7. Write Legibly It kind of goes without saying, but I’m gonna say it anyway. If your penmanship has ever been compared to chicken scratch, you better work on it. You’ll thwart your taking notes efforts if you can’t read what you’ve written! Force yourself to write clearly. I guarantee that you will not remember the exact lecture when it comes to exam time, so your notes are often going to be your only lifeline.
Tips: 1. Sit near the front of the class 2. Use a good pen like the Pilot Dr. Grip if writing in pencil will bother you 3. Keep a folder or binder for every class, so you're more likely to keep your notes organized.
What You Need
A writing instrument, preferably a pencil College-ruled lined paper A binder or folder to store your notes
Date your notes. In a perfect world, lecture notes from a single class are kept in a single, dedicated notebook in the correct sequence. But this is the real world! There will be times when you go to biology class (for instance) and realize that you’ve brought the history notebook by accident. This is how you end up with the Battle of Bunker Hill wedged between mitosis and meiosis. Establish the habit of putting the date at the beginning of each day’s notes and marking the end of a day’s notes. Also—if you ever have to take history notes in your biology notebook—be sure to start on a clean sheet of paper, mark the date, and tear it out. Then place the loose sheet in the correct notebook pocket. No pockets? Staple it in.
Ask for a lecture theme – get an idea of the big picture. Professors and teachers usually lecture from an outline they’ve prepared ahead of time. They often try to complete one topic, theme, or cycle in an individual lecture—although there will be some overlap some days. Don’t be afraid to ask your teacher for the topic of the day or the theme of the day’s lecture.
Sometimes, teachers will get on a roll and/or get ahead of themselves and move from one theme to another without letting you know. If you notice that the professor seems to be talking about something you’ve never heard of before, the teacher might be transitioning from one topic to another. If you suspect that’s happening, just ask: “Are we changing topics?” If you listen carefully, you can usually pattern your own notes according to the teacher’s own outline. Especially if you listen for transition words.
Watch for digressions and mark them. Teachers don’t try to make things complicated; they usually try to lecture in an organized pattern, but this is not always easy. Sometimes a student will make a comment, ask a question, or relay a personal experience that pivots the lecture into an unplanned tangent. This will happen. When this does happen, strange things can happen to your notes. For instance: A student asks a question and the teacher answers. The teacher digresses, and then jumps back onto the planned lecture. But the students don’t always realize the dividing line between digressions and planned lecture, so they keep writing furiously, not indicating any break or interruption in the flow of the teacher’s thoughts. The next day, the lecture notes will make little sense. To avoid confusion, always indicate in your notes when a student asks a question or the class breaks into a discussion. Also indicate if and when your teacher says something like “let's get back to the topic.”
Draw pictures and make arrows. If you’re visual person, you should make as many doodles on your paper as you can. Useful doodles, that is. As soon as you realize that once topic relates to another, comes before another, is the opposite of another, or has any kind of connection to another—draw a picture that makes sense to you. Sometimes the information will not sink in until and unless you see it in an image.
Underline new vocabulary. Any time a teacher writes a word on the board, put a circle around it, underline it, or draw pointy arrows around it. If a strange word pops up in your notes, you can bet it will show up on a test. Remember, you must know more than the definition of a new word. You must know how it fits into the big picture.
Look for code words in the lecture. There are certain code words to look out for in a lecture that can indicate that your teacher is giving you the relevance or the context of an event. Remember, the teacher wants you to understand why things happen and how things relate to the big picture. This is why essay questions exist! Code words can indicate relationships, significance, or order. Always indicate when your teacher says:
There were three causes… The first reason… In the months leading up to… Some people saw this as … while others believed…
There are four steps to the process The reaction to X was…
Compare your lecture notes to the book. Sometimes it’s impossible to find a pattern in the teacher’s lecture. If you find that your notes are confusing and provide no hint of a pattern, go straight to your textbook. Take a look at the topics the teacher covers and see how those compare to the chapter titles and subtitles of the textbook. Chances are, things will start to make better sense when you see how the author arranged them.