Time to Reconsider your Methods
When I got to college, I think I had my Mom buy me a bunch of spiral-bound notebooks for the courses in my first semester. I enjoyed the college-ruled line height because I thought it let me pack more into a page of notes. I definitely found myself with three more weeks of class and three more pages in a notebook and I would try to write small enough to fit all the notes. Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about. I even recall asking a student next to me if I could borrow a piece of paper to take notes in the last session of my chemistry class. I stapled it into the pack of my notebook.
It was the chemistry class that broke me down. I just hated the look of equations and planar models in my notebook. I couldn’t see the superscripts or the subscripts on chemical formulas. In my second semester, I went the way of plain paper…no lines. It was unexpectedly freeing. Taking away the lines somehow made me a better note-taker. Add a trusty pack of highlighters and my notes were this color-coded memoryThe ability to store and recall information. maker.
When I started teaching, my notes were typed. It was faster for me to get it on a page. My notes were still a color-coded memory maker. I would use different fonts for different things like vocab words, important figures in the book to mention, hints to drop about test questions, and even a reminder about common student questions I might have to field.
As we moved into the digital age of education, I started to use Powerpoint slides (I was chalk-and-talk for a long time). I would see students using the slides and not taking any notes. Then, when it came time to complete an exercise in lab or a case study at home, the student would not have their own interpretation of concepts to work from. They would have no outline of important figures in the book, vocab words to use in answers, and answers to common questions asked by others in the class. Something similar happened after the pandemic. Note-taking in a remote class is strange. You’re online. Do you type or write your notes? Do you pull up the Powerpoint, or just watch the teacher?
No matter the challenge, good note-taking can be done in multiple ways for all modalities of teaching. One of the best-known systems of note-taking is Cornell notes. This is a clearinghouse of different note-taking templates. The collection is almost endless. Despite the format on the page, the Cornell note-taking system wants you to reflect on what you’ve learned, connect concepts together, identify solid terminology to use on assignments, and help you make a really really good memory-maker.
See for yourself about the Cornell notes system.
See Cornell notes templates available for download.
**Warning – I highly recommend using the Powerpoint format and maybe the PDF. The Word formats of these files tend to be cumbersome and frustrating to format.
List of terms
- memory