Note Taking Guidelines

Note Taking Guidelines

Note taking is probably the single most important skill that a college-bound high school student can master. Once confident at note taking, students can excel at any lecture-format class. Note taking is hard work and unrelenting, however, and takes practice. Each night after a class lecture, students should redraft notes in pen and include additional examples or reflections that come to mind. Don’t put it off. Finalized packets could be 20+ pages long. In no way could such a project be completed to a high standard in one night.

Assessment

Mr. Beeken expects students to create modified Cornell Style notes in his classes. Format should be question-based with reflections in the margins. In Mr. Beeken’s class, notes are graded using a four-part criteria. (C,O,I, N)

Content------How much information in conveyed? Are there plenty of explanations and examples? Are concepts adequately explained using bullet points and hyphens. Is there more content than whatever the instructor provided in writing on the board or screen?

Organization---- Do the notes use a question-based format? Are the notes in proper order of the menu? Are questions used as headings and subheadings? Is the content organized in subsets and subcategories with related concepts clumped together? Are thinking maps used? Are explanations and definitions abbreviated instead of using sentences or paragraphs? Are major concepts underlined or highlighted for easy reference?

Interaction------Is there a generous amount of student reflection and creativity? How much is the person’s personality evident? Are there ample opinions and reactions? Are there pictures, diagrams, charts, maps embedded within the words and phrases. Did the student cut and paste a few pictures into the notes? Are there captions beneath the visuals? Is color added?

Neatness------Are the notes finalized in pen? (no pencil, no ink bleeding through etc.)

Are the notes legible and condensed so that there isn’t a lot of empty space per page?

Are the notes stapled neatly in order of the menu?

Suggested Note taking Styles

No particular format of notes is required, but students may adopt any combination of note taking styles featured here to achieve their own style.

1. Graphic Organizer----Utilizes any of the Thinking Maps suggested at WCHS to show relationships between concepts and how ideas are linked together.

2. Cause and Effect---Effective use of arrows that point out the sequence of events that show how one event led to another or a step-by-step process .

3. Formal Outline----Utilizes Roman numerals for general concepts and a series of letters and numbers to break the information into subcategories.

4. Informal Outline---Concepts and explanations are clustered using boxes, bullets and hyphens; looks like a formal outline minus the letters, numbers, and Roman numerals.

5. Pictoral--- Notes dominated by sketches, charts, maps or graphs that are labeled and segmented.