OEC
Note-taking strategies

Note-taking strategies: January 20/21, 2009

Class started with four minutes to look over Chapter 5 quiz

• Quiz¹ is 15 minutes; the last five minutes, you may use your notes (but not your book).

James Zull on note-taking methods. Any good note-taking method will have the note-taker do the following to information:

• Gather
• Analyzing
• Creating
• Acting

In five groups, today: your goal is to come up with your own method of note-taking. This will allow you to innovate, and to think about strategies that work for you (that might be substantially different from Cornell notes, if you’re not a fan of those).

Your strategy has to show (examples in italics):

• A way of taking information in (I’m going to bullet it)
• A way of analyzing information (I’m going to color-code concepts)
• A way of creating (I’m going to make a practice test, using the format I think the professor is most likely to use)
• A way of acting (I’m going to take that practice test and study from it)

Assign jobs within your groups:

• One person is recorder, who will write down what your group comes up with
• One person is director, who will keep conversation flowing and make sure group is on task
• One person is reporter, who will present information to class

Will present at the beginning of class next session.

¹ Including essay responses on back:

• Did you use some variation of label/margin system to take notes on Chapter 5?
• Did you feel prepared for today’s quiz? Why or why not?
• Draw a t-graph. On one side: what works about label/margin system? On the other: what does not?