Notetaking Lessons

A word about abbreviations and symbols:

• ONLY choose ones that make sense to YOU. Your notes are for you and only YOU. Make up abbreviations and symbols as you like, but these are common ones to try.

Common Abbreviations

Handy Symbols to know

Want to PRINT this sheet?

Optional: Lots more abbreviations

Ways to use Color

• Consider a color-code and stick with it
• Items to code: Vocabulary, Questions, Key ideas
• Three colors + your note-taking color will be enough (choose common colors!)
  • For ex: Black ink for notes, blue for vocabulary, red for key ideas, green for questions/connections
• View video below and related article HERE
• QUESTION: What color-coding might you use for your own notes?

Ways to show Hierarchy

• Understand the structure of the information to learn and remember it better
• Change text size to show some ideas are more important than others (Headings!)
• Indent (-->) to show facts, evidence, vocabulary, ideas under a larger idea
• Use numbers to show sequences
• Use arrows to show cause and effect or connections
• Use circles, boxes, bubbles, and underlining to make important information stand out. Consider a code: all vocabulary underlined in blue? Main ideas boxed in red? Headings with a cloud shape?
• See the sample below:
  • What techniques has the student used to show hierarchy?
  • What ways appeal to you?

A word about highlighting....

• ONLY highlight after you are sure you fully understand new information
• Use highlighters according to color-coding AFTER you have identified the structure of the information and the key vocabulary
• Underlining, circling, and "boxing" in colored pens is even better!

How does Sketchnoting enhance your learning?

• The act of drawing engages another part of your brain since you need to create something visual to represent an idea. When you take text and transfer it to a visual, your brain does extra (good) thinking
• Visuals in your notes make reviewing your notes more meaningful and easier to see

How to Sketchnote?

• Check out the videos below for some ideas
• All of the basic ideas apply (color, structure, hierarchy, leaving white space to fill in later)
• Like Concept Mapping, it may be easier to sketchnote AFTER learning new information - it depends on your own brain and how you think!
• Consider adding quick sketches to your text-based notes

Mix it up! Add sketchnotes to your Cornell-style notes

Review (also called "Revise") means going over information to relearn it, usually for a test!

Review Strategies:

• Use notes to identify key information needed
• Anticipate questions and answer them
• Teach it to friends or family
• Re-work your notes by adding, highlighting, drawing
• Quiz yourself using flashcards, or by covering parts of notes

Next-Level Strategies: Up your game with these

1) Create a "one-pager" a single sheet that represents the information you are learning.

• Incorporate visuals, hierarchies, informational structures to represent the information as fully, but also briefly as possible.
• Have several pages of information on one topic? Re-write and re-organize gradually into shorter and shorter chunks until you can finally fit it all on one page. 
• The examples below are quite artistic but a one-pager for review doesn't need to be fancy - it's just for YOU

2) Another kind of One-Pager is a CONCEPT MAP!

• Reorganize pages of notes into a concept map to represent the information visually. 
• Pull out ideas that go together such as a cycle, a compare/contrast chart, or a spider chart to show how your text-based notes fit together

3) Create smaller notebooks made of cards and tape - see the video below

• The smaller pages force you to synthesize to just the key information

Coming soon!