Students Take Notes

Do you know if your students take good notes in your class?  How can you facilitate better note-taking? Talk with your students and give them a full rationale for making note-taking part of their learning routine and provide some innovative ideas.

Our students know that note-taking is important, and some of them rely on their notes when they study for tests.  Do they know that they should employ at least two channels for learning (the major ones are auditory, kinetic, and visual)?  IF they listen to you AND take notes, then they have employed two pathways.

Change in Education blogger Dan Hess experimented with showing students the value of notes, by asking them to write down almost everything during one lecture.  Then as a group, he helped them compile information into the Cornell system.  Since class was over, he let them take cell phone photos of the result. 

Students "taking notes" by phone

He not only taught students better note-taking methods, he showed them the value of collaborative note-taking.

Another creative option is to use "visual note-taking" including doodling on the page.  Purposeful drawings help students engage visual (leading to better memory).  Check out these links on doodling and visual notetaking, by Sunni Brown:

http://vizthink.com/blog/2010/05/14/sunni-brown-and-the-doodle-revolution-a-tedx-talk/
and
http://www.vizworld.com/2010/08/sunni-brown-doodle-revolution/  (this one is only 5 minutes!)