Skill Builder No. 4: Note Taking

Skills Guide Content

Goal: Effective note taking teaches students how to listen, summarize and build a reliable tool for studying

When you take notes, your brain is engaged in listening, summarizing, and writing those thoughts down. Just the act of taking notes will sharpen attention and focus skills, help with memory/recall and strengthen our habit-building “muscles.”

Your student might need different pens, pencils, colors and highlighters to bring attention to important concepts taught in class or in reading. Most importantly, your student might need your time and attention to their notes so they can tell you what they learned. The act of reviewing notes out loud to another person is incredibly effective in finding out what has been learned/comprehended vs what needs more work.

Activity from Planner

When you take notes your brain is engaged! Notes should include critical facts, short phrases and help you remember what you read or heard.

Use underlines, arrows —>, invent abbreviations or symbols @ Use the space around the edges to test some symbols, doodles, or abbreviations you want to use in your notes.

Extended Activity

Taking notes can be incredibly overwhelming and feel like a complete waste of time. But, when you take notes, your brain is engaged in listening, summarizing, and writing those thoughts down. Just the act of taking notes will sharpen your attention and focus skills, help with memory/recall and strengthen your habit-building “muscle.”

Notes can contain words, lines, doodles, thoughts, colors, and drawings that combine to help trigger your thoughts about the learned materials.

Notes should include critical facts, short phrases and help you remember what you read or heard. Some people like to write quite a lot, then review and highlight the important information. Some people want to write bullet points, while others write the complete sentence they hear and listen longer before writing more.

Your notes are for your use only — there isn’t one right way to do this, so try a few things and do what works for you. Here are some ideas:

• Use underlines on anything that helps you remember
• Use arrows to show that one thing causes another thing or leads to the next event
• Invent abbreviations and symbols that make sense to you. Here are some easy abbreviations that you may want to use
  • @ ⟶ at
  • b/c ⟶ because
  • w/o ⟶ without
  • ppl ⟶ people
  • natl ⟶ national
  • ed ⟶ education
  • gov ⟶ government
  • b4 ⟶ before

Use the space below — to test some symbols, doodles, abbreviations, and marks you might want to use when taking notes.

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