#notetaking 101

[intelligentintentions]

Taking notes from a textbook takes practice. If you find yourself struggling, these are my top tips for reading textbooks efficiently.

Use an outline note format | Outlining simply means that you use headings and sub-points to organize your notes. For example, write down the chapter title and use bullet points beneath it. When you get to a heading, write down the headings and continue note taking. Indent your bullets when the text begins to elaborate on existing information and giving more explanation and examples.

Use highlighters effectively | Different subjects require different highlighter use. In subjects like history or social studies, assign a specific purpose to each color highlighter. For example, important people are in yellow, important places in pink, important events in blue, important dates in orange. You can be more or less detailed if you want. This allows you to quickly find the information you need when studying.

For subjects like science and math, use hierarchical highlighting. What I mean by this is use one color for broad concept vocabulary words (ex. “Standard Deviation”). Then use another color for more specific vocab words that build off of that broad concept. (ex. “Variance”). Then use another color for any specific concepts related to the previous word. For example, I might highlight the equation for variance in orange. This method helps me organize mindmaps because I know that my first color concepts are going to be the main ideas while the colors afterwards are the details.

Use your resources | Nowadays many textbooks have gone beyond just simply writing full pages of plain text and include more graphics and infographics. When your text includes things like pictures, charts, or highlights key vocab words in the margins, use those concepts to guide your notetaking. Obviously the concepts that pertain to those things are the most important.

Manage your time | If your teacher assigns you reading that is going to take you more time than you have or if you are behind on your reading, simply focus on three things: bolded vocab words, headings, and graphics. Instead of reading every word on the page, look for these things and focus solely on them. This will save you time while giving you enough general understanding to get what’s going on in class. Be sure to take a closer look later if you have time, though!

When you can, get ahead | I find it much more helpful to have read the chapter or assigned reading before it’s actually assigned. This is because typically classes and texts usually go from broad to specific. I usually get lost in the broad concepts, so learning the specific examples and applications that we tend to learn at the end of the unit at the beginning of the unit keeps me from getting confused.

Draw or print off images | Like I said before, pictures and diagrams in your text are there for a reason: they help focus you on important concepts and help to clarify the information. Always copy these graphs and images into your notes. If you aren’t good at drawing, find a similar graphic online and print it off to tape into your notes so you can reference it later.

Online videos and audio | If you find that you get distracted while reading textbooks and simply can’t get through it, look online on Youtube and other sites for online versions and lectures on the textbook. You can usually find an audio version or videos of teachers physically going through each chapter which is much more engaging and can help auditory learners.

Include practice problems | For subjects like math, science, and economics where you do calculations, do a practice problem using the equation or concept you are taking notes on. You can write it directly on the page or on a post it note and place it on the page so you have a reference of how the calculation is actually used and what a properly done one looks like.

xo Kirsten

[intelligentintentions]

I'm studying for History and your notes are amazing. Can you give me tips on how you take notes? How much notes do you take for History and how do you know what to put on the notes so you will remember? Also how long does it take you to do just one page? Anyways, thank you. P.S. I feel like i take too long and take too many notes. -Ravy :)

Note Taking 101

Part I: Outlining

The first thing you should know is that the notes that I post here on my blog are not the first notes that I take! The pretty notes I take are summaries of the unit that I do right before an exam as part of my review. When taking notes from a textbook or from a powerpoint or a teacher lecture I use an outline note form like this:

It’s okay if you don’t use fancy handwriting or cute doodles, you just need to be able to find the information when you go back to your notes!

TIP: if you feel like you are taking too long to write down notes by hand, feel free to type them on the computer! Use Word or Google Drive and print them off so you have them during class.

I’ve taken both AP United States History and AP European History. In my experience, it takes me about an hour to an hour and a half to do my daily outline notes from our assigned textbook reading (which is usually around 10ish pages per night).The time varies per page. It just depends on how interested I am in the subject, how much I understand the content, and whether or not I have any distractions.

As a rule of thumb, you should never have more pages of notes than pages in your textbook. Try to aim for half as many pages of notes than the pages that you’ve read. For example, for every 10 pages of textbook, you should have 5 pages of notes or less.

Part II: How to Be Concise

Keep your notes strictly about specific information. Who. What. When. Where. Why. There are only 4 things that you need to be paying attention to when taking notes:

1. People | If a person is only mentioned once and what they did has little lasting effect, then you don’t need to write them down. If they are mentioned more than once or if what they did continues to be brought up, then make note of them! If you are presented with a list of people (e.g. a list of authors, painters, etc) then choose once or two to write down and leave it at that.

2. Events | Events that should be written down have lasting effects. These are things like wars, turning points, rebellions, treaties, etc. Think about the big picture. Just because its in the textbook does not mean that you need to know every detail.

3. Cause and Effects |  What happened before the event and what happened as a result of it? Keep your list short and to the point, bullet points are best. Think about what people felt and think about how people reacted.

4.Dates | This is a tricky one because most curriculum are moving away from being date-centric. You don’t need to know the dates of every event, but you should understand the order of events. Write a timeline at the top of the page to keep track of when events happen: early in the century, mid century, or late in the century.

TIP: Never use full sentences, always stick to sentence fragments and bullet points

Part III: Retaining the Information

Taking notes doesn’t help you if you can’t study with them. Here are some study techniques for you to try out:

Mindmapping. Here is a tutorial I made on how to make one and use it to study.

Graphic Notes. Summarize each chapter on ONE page. These are what I post on tumblr ;) This is a nice guide on how to embellish your notes. Focus on the key points, those four things that I mentioned above.

Flashcards. Use paper cards or digital flashcards like Quizlet to define terms quickly and efficiently.

Youtube. Watch videos about the subject that you are studying. For history, JoczProductions and Adam Norris are the best for APUSH. CrashCourse is wonderful for all history. For any of the sciences, Paul Andersen’s Bozeman Science is the way to go.

Practice Quizzes. The site albert.io has practice quizzes for almost every subject and is awesome for AP students because it has questions designed to be like the ones on the AP test.

Whew! That was long, but hopefully helped somewhat? Thanks for your support!

Bisous,

Kirsten