If it feels like you forget new information almost as quickly as you hear it, even if you write it down, that’s because we tend to lose almost 40% of new information within the first 24 hours of first reading or hearing it. If we take notes effectively, however, we can retain and retrieve almost 100% of the information we receive.
Note taking is an underrated skill. Note taking isn’t just important for college students, it’s a valuable life skill. If you are able to take good notes, you will be more effective in pursuing your goals whether you are a student, writer, or entrepreneur. There’s a correlation between taking notes and creative thinking. Taking Lecture Notes The Goal: Capture the lecturer's ideas as accurately and fully as possible in the order the ideas are delivered, to allow for analyzing, reflecting and making them your own. The Reason: To make a record of the lecture to fill the gaps created by the massive forgetting that will take place during and after the lecture. Note taking is mostly important to students because it helps them to remember better.As mentioned previously people cannot remember everything and to make it worst a typical text book comprises of redundant and significant info. So what happens if a student does not take notes while reading book? “With PowerPoint summaries, students have the product—good notes—but skip the process—the actual taking and reconstructing of notes.” (p. 95) There is also accumulating evidence (the article below references seven studies) that giving students teacher-prepared notes or PowerPoint slides does not improve their performance.
Importance Of Taking Notes While Reading
Learning how to retain information
The most effective note-taking skills involve active rather than passive learning. Active learning places the responsibility for learning on the learner. Research has found that, for learning to be effective, students need to be doing things with the material they are engaging with (reading, writing, discussing, solving problems).
They must also be thinking about the thinking (metacognition) involved in engaging with the material. This means that, while students are learning the content, they should also be thinking about how they are learning it. What is causing confusion? How does your thinking change about this topic as you are learning? What has worked well for you in learning this topic that you should do next time? What hasn’t worked so well so you don’t make that learning mistake again?
Studies have found note taking is most effective when notes are organised and transformed in some way or when a teacher gives examples of good notes. An effective note-taking strategy requires effort. Half the battle with students is helping them understand the reasons for needing to take and interact regularly with their notes.
Students often tell teachers they have excellent memories and don’t need to take notes because they can easily recall information. Research says this is not the case.
The goal of effective note taking is to help recall what has been learned and retain that information over time. German psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus in 1895 conducted some of the first experiments on memory and recall, and spaced learning. He developed the forgetting curve, which shows how information is lost quickly over time if there is no strategy or effort to retain it.
The rate of forgetting is minimised if students interact (re-read/discuss/write/engage) with their notes within 24 hours. A second repetition for a shorter period of time within a day brings recall back up to 100%. A third repetition within a week for an even shorter time brings recall back to 100%.
What are the most effective ways to take notes?
I teach the Cornell Note-Taking System, which was developed in the 1950s as part of a university preparation program (AVID). Effective note taking is interactive and involves using the original notes many times over to build memory of the content, rather than seeing note taking as just a one-off copying activity. The important features of this system are captured in the images below.
There are four stages to good note taking:
- Note taking
- Note making
- Note interacting
- Note reflecting
In note taking, students:
• Prepare a page to take notes the same way each time. An essential question at the top of the page focuses the learner on the key learning objective that they should be able to discuss upon leaving the class
• Rule the page into two columns, with the first column taking up about a third of the page. The space on the left is for questions and notes that may be added in later as students reflect on their notes. The space on the right is for the student to take notes from the lecture, textbook, laboratory experiment, video, audio, whatever the source
• Listen and take notes in their own words – paraphrase what they hear so it makes sense to them rather than write down verbatim what they hear/see
• Leave spaces and lines between main ideas for revising later and adding information
• Develop their own consistent system of abbreviations and symbols to save time as they take notes
• Write in phrases, not complete sentences
• Use bullet points and lists where possible
• Learn how to listen for important information versus trivial information
• Take cues from the lecturer or source, e.g. “This is important…”
• Use highlighters and colour to indicate key ideas, changes in concepts or links between information.
In note making, students:
• Review and revise the content of their notes
• Write questions in the left-hand side near where the answer is contained on the right-hand side
• Connect key chunks of material in the notes pages using colour or symbols
• Exchange ideas and collaborate with other students to check for understanding and test the comprehensiveness of each other’s notes.
In note interacting, students:
The Importance Of Taking Notes 6 Grade
• Link all the learning together by writing a summary that addresses the essential question and answers the questions from the left margin. Note that a summary is different from a reflection that focuses on the student’s response to the learning task or content
• Learn from their notes by building in to their study timetable regular times for revising their notes for each subject
• Cover the information on the right-hand side and use the questions as study prompts before a test.
In note reflecting:
• Written feedback should be provided by a peer, tutor or teacher to check for the student’s understanding in the initial learning phase
• Students should address the feedback by focusing on one area of challenge they are experiencing in their learning
• Students should also reflect over an entire unit on a regular basis leading up to exams and tests.
Despite popular opinion, note-taking has not disappeared, it has been revolutionized. For some, note-taking is an outdated concept, but its significance in learning is relentless. So why is it so important?
“Researchers found that if important information was contained in notes, it had a 34 percent chance of being remembered. Information not found in notes had only a five percent chance of being remembered” (Howe, 1970, in Longman and Atkinson, 1999).
7 Key Benefits of Effective Note-taking
What Is The Importance Of Notes Taking In Listening Skill
It has been proven that effective note-taking enhances academic success, but does it do more?
1. Improves focus and attention to detail. Developing note-taking skills engages a student, requiring them to focus and increase their attention to detail, and as we all know, the devil is in the detail!
2. Promotes active learning. By taking effective notes, students are actively involved in the learning process thus giving it a purpose and increasing productivity.
3. Boosts comprehension and retention. A proven method of increasing memory retention, note-taking can also increase comprehension by breaking down the content for a student to consume easily.
4. Teaches prioritizing skills. Often overlooked in its importance, it is essential for a student to be able to select important material and discard unnecessary content. This further adds to their organizational and creativity skills.
5. Extends attention span. Proven to extend a student’s attention span, a necessary tool in any learning situation!
6. Improves organization skills. By prioritizing content and organizing effectively, a student develops key organization strengths. As teachers are well aware, organization is key!
7. Increases creativity. Equipped with the ability to organize their ideas effectively, focus on a particular subject and expand on ideas through knowledge retention, students can use their own initiative increasing creativity and innovation.
The Evolution of Note-taking
Notes have since moved from the page to the screen. Thanks to e-portfolios and e-notes, note-taking has become even more significant, and almost a necessity for students and educators alike. Today, e-portfolios are used as online learning records, building a learning management system and allowing students to engage in effective self-assessment, while simultaneously allowing educators to track and record progress easily. The introduction of e-notes has made it easier to manage and share your notes, as well as making them more accessible.
The Next Generation Note-taking: Fishtree E-notes
As part of Fishtree’s next generation learning platform, students and teachers alike have the ability to expand on lessons by indulging in the e-notes feature. Here, students can take information from the lesson and create their own notes that will become available to them each time they log in. Students then have the option to share these notes with their classmates to allow cooperative and collaborative learning (especially useful for project-based learning). Similarly, teachers can use the e-notes feature to create student e-portfolios to track progress and conduct assessments effectively and easily.
So now that we have established its importance, why not try out the next generation of note-taking for yourself?
The Importance Of Taking Notes In Class
About the author:
The Importance Of Taking Notes In Class
Lorna Keane is a teacher of French, English and ESL. She specializes in language teaching and has taught in second and third-level institutions in several countries. She holds a B.A in languages and cultural studies and an M.A in French literature, theory and visual culture. Subscribe to her blog or follow her on Twitter.