Increasing Learning By Using Note Taking Strategies How To Effectively Teach and Implement Note Taking Strategies for Your Students With Special Needs By Jen Allen

Teaching Note Taking Skills Why Is Note Taking Important? o Note taking is an encoding function that causes information to be processed deeply o Note taking provides external storage for future access to information that is not yet committed to long term memory o Lecture is a major form of teaching in High School and college so it is a necessary tool for education, especially higher education (one study found that college students spend 80% of class time listening to lectures and taking notes!)

Teaching Note Taking Skills Why Students Struggle (Especially ELN Students) Note Taking Is Overwhelming and Requires Many Simultaneous Skills: Must have sustained attention Must comprehend what the teacher is saying Must be able to decipher what is critical and what is irrelevant Must be able to take what is said and translate it into a paraphrased form Must be able to coherently organize info Must be able to write quickly and legibly

Teaching Note Taking Skills What Can Teachers Do?? We will review 8 note taking strategies: Teachers must teach ELN students note taking-skills and then must also prompt the students to implement the skills during lecture. 1.teach abbreviations 2.teach summarizing 3.partial graphic organizer notes 4.guided notes 5.strategic notes 6.brick and mortar notes 7.three-column personalized notes 8.newspaper notes

Teaching Note Taking Skills Teach Abbr. (Abbreviation) Prompt students to put a code in the corner of the page where students write out an abbr. key Give abbr. lists handout Prompt abbr. during lecture

Teaching Note Taking Skills Teach Summarizing Teaching summarizing is helpful because it starts to help students synthesize information and begin to commit it to memory through metacognitive function. Teachers must LET the students do the summarizing, but teachers need to GUIDE students, especially ELN students, on WHAT is important to summarize. Ways to Guide Students Use guided notes Review main points before lecture (activate prior knowledge especially past vocabulary that will be important) Review main points during and after lecture (repetition) Allow students reflection time after lecture to synthesize their notes into their own summaries and ask questions about things they missed or are still unclear

Teaching Note Taking Skills Partial Graphic Organizer Notes It is important to provide a general scaffolding for students to follow, but also give students a chance to think, and therefore learn, for themselves Helps to make lectures less confusing especially for ELN students since there is a clear guide as to what is most important Helps to make future reference and study from the notes more effective since the concepts are outlined and organized how the teacher intended them to be

Teaching Note Taking Skills Guided Notes Graphic organizers are good to include in guided notes Guided notes are a ‘skeleton outline’ listing main ideas/concepts and giving room for students to fill in additional info from lecture Provides explicitness and structure that ELN students often struggle to achieve on their own Provides accurate and complete notes for later study Are especially beneficial when paired with lecture review at the end of the period Students are more actively engaged which helps solve the problem of keeping sustained attention It is easier for students, especially ELN, to clearly see what information is and is not essential

Teaching Note Taking Skills Strategic Notes Students are asked to identify the topic and then brainstorm on what they already know. During lecture they are asked to organizes subsequent main points and then summarize everything at the end. Still incorporates activating prior knowledge in order to help students to connect what they already know about the lecture topic Students are given more generic rather then specific guides with written clues to help with what material to include in notes Helps students become engaged in the lecture and improve comprehension Increases memory and organization and reduces confusion through activation prior knowledge, organizing, and summarizing new information

Brick and Mortar Notes Set Up Students draw boxes around 2 lines on notebook paper (mortar) and then around 5 or 6 lines underneath (brick) Questions from lecture are written in mortar and answers are written in the bricks Benefits Useful study tool – students just cover the bricks and try to answer the questions Formulating questions helps with comprehension Active note taking helps increase attention Teaching Note Taking Skills

Three-Column Personalized Notes Helps students create personal connections to the curriculum The first column is narrow and is for subheadings The second column is wide and is for extended notes The third column is narrow and is for personal examples or thoughts Option to have students share their personal examples in small groups or with the class to help engage personal relation to the material Benefits: Relating the material to student’s lives helps with motivation, attention, confusion, and memory Teaching Note Taking Skills

Newspaper Notes Emphasis is on summarizing material the way a newspaper reporter has to summarize an article in one paragraph Summarizing is equivalent to comprehension Most applicable in literature, history, or current events Typically the page is set up into a columnar matrix of boxes where students record who, what, when, where, why and how, and possibly to whom and effect By breaking down the material into these subcategories, students feel less overwhelmed and feel like learning the material is more manageable