I've been hearing and reading a great deal lately about taking notes--why students do it (or, more often, don't do it), what are effective methods of taking notes, how to best use them once they're taken, and so on. When I was a student, it seems like that was something that I didn't do a lot of, quite frankly. Occasionally, I might jot down a quick little tidbit, or if the teacher said something blatant like "This will be on your test; write it down," my pen would flutter across the pages of my notebook. But I definitely didn't have an overall plan of attack when it came to taking notes. Still, I got by all right.
Fast forward to a decade or two later, and now I find myself teaching at Redacted College, and my students likewise have no idea how to take notes. Last night as I dismissed class, I glanced over at the notebook of one of my students sitting near the front of the classroom. She had a pure, virginal piece of paper showing, upon which was written the words "Work on essay." To add emphasis (and perhaps to fill up more of the virginal white space) she had circled the command. As we near the end of the semester, and as the due date for this final essay approaches, little wonder that I would remind my students that they should indeed work on writing that essay. One has to wonder: did she really need the note? And, more disturbingly, is this the only thing she took away from yesterday's class session?
Many students have heard of the Cornell Note Taking technique. (For a quick discussion, complete with visuals (!), look here.) It's a way to bring order to chaos. It organizes the information you hear in class. It even provides you with a study guide. The beauty of the Cornell system is that it's easy to adopt and pays off in practical ways. So why don't students use it more? (He asked rhetorically yet desperately.)
Oh wise tutors, does this come up in session? How do you help your tutees take better notes?
2 comments:
I'm an English/ESL tutor so note taking questions does not really come up in my sessions;however,I can say that I have encountered students who do not write notes in their books or readings that have long passages (allowing them to have a very difficult time in gaining knowledge of what they read). I tell my students to always write down the main topics/ main ideas of what they read even if it's on a post it note.
Color coding or highlighting also works after the student has written the notes. This helps especially if they seem to be "off the topic" and tend to doze off. I also suggest to students to write notes in acronyms or mnemonics in order to remember lists or thoughts; art doodles of what they just learned is helpful too. Finally, I remember my former history teacher taught me that taking notes in outline form is not such a bad idea. It is time consuming though.
If I'm taking notes while reading, I either write in the margins or highlight on the PDF. In class, I usually start with a topic header, then break things down from there. I'm in art school, so during critiques I tend to scribble in a web sort of way, drawing arrows and making connections in that way.
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