Chapter three:

How to take notes

 Taking Notes:

While many students view notetaking as an activity conducted simply in lecture, solid notetaking skills require preparation and reflection as well. Your class notes can serve as an important tool for reviewing your collected material and distilling key concepts. The following system provides suggestions on ways to take good notes and use them well. The key is to develop a system that enables you to recall the information you want to tell your story.

Assignment: 5 points

1. On a diskette list all the material you have collected in your portfolio that will help you to prepare your story and eventually help you form an opinion.

2. Recall Column:
On a piece of paper use (2 and a half inches) on the left side for joting down ideas about all the material you have collected in your portfolio. I want to see how you think about what you have collected.

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3. Main column:
On the right side of the paper use the (remaining 6 inches) to jot down as much of the information about your collected material as you can.
Hint
Reduce ideas and facts toconcise jottings and summaries as cues for Reciting, Reviewing, and Reflecting.

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Example:

4. Two options:
One.
Pass in this paper to me in class on July 8th. This is also the day you have to show to me what your portfolio looks like so far with all the material you have collected.
Two.
If you can use microsoft word and make these columns on a page in the program save the work to diskette. I then can look at both your work on diskette as well as the paper you pass in. If you do it all on the word program all you have to do is print it out.

Note:You must pass in the paper with the columns on it and all your notes.

Helpful suggestion for you!

The following format (ways to take your notes) provides the perfect opportunity for following through with the 5 R's of note-taking. If you follow these 5 helpful ways to use your notes it will give you ideas throughout the course. Here they are:

• 1. Record. During the time you collect material for your portfolio record in the main column (on the right) as many meaningful facts and ideas as you can about the subject you have chosen. Write legibly so you can review your work easily. Leave some room between your sentences on the paper to jot down more ideas as they come to your mind.

• 2. Reduce. As soon after as possible, summarize your ideas and facts concisely in the Recall Column (on the left). Summarizing clarifies meanings and relationships, reinforces continuity, and strengthens memory. Also, it is a way of preparing for your final portfolio presentation.

• 3. Recite. Now go over the column, using only your jottings in the Recall Column as cues or "flags" to help you recall, say over facts and ideas of the collected material as fully as you can, not mechanically, but in your own words and with as much appreciation of the meaning as you can. Then, uncovering your notes, verify what you have said. This procedure helps to transfer the facts and ideas of your long term memory. It will also give you a new way to look at what you are about to do with your story. If you get new ideas about your story and the way you will collect more material for the final portfolio jot those ideas down in the main column.

• 4. Reflect. Reflection distills opinions from your notes. These opinions are the starting point for your own musings upon the subject you have chosen. Such musings aid you in making sense out of your material and the relationships with the material you have found. Reflection will continually enable you to label and index all your ideas, put them into structures, outlines, summaries, and frames of reference. Then you can rearrange and file all your notes. Best of all, you will be able to tell what is vital-for the portfolio. Unless ideas are placed in categories, unless they are taken up from time to time for re-examination, they will become inert and soon forgotten.

• 5. Review. If you will spend 10 minutes every week or so in a quick review of your notes, you will retain most of what you have learned, and you will be able to use your knowledge currently to greater and greater effectiveness.

  Refer to chapter three in the course book for a more complete analysis for taking notes.

Great! You are on your way to starting your story which will all come together in the final presentation of your completed portfolio. There is lots of time so do not woory. However, do not get behind because you must use all these ideas from the first 4 weeks in developing how your potfolio will look.

Chapter two | Chapter four