Friday, September 14, 2012

How do I improve my note-taking?

Meta: How do I improve my note-taking?

You have taken notes on Obamas and Clinton's Democratic National Convention (DNC) 2012 speeches. We also discussed different styles of note taking: informal outline, web, and combination notes. You were asked to apply one of these styles to your notes on Clinton. You were told to keep in mind the rubric for good note-taking while you took notes on Clinton's speech.

Three common style of note-taking. 

1. Informal outline. Uses indentation to indicate major ideas and their related details. Students simply indent ideas that are more subordinate.

2. Visual representation
Web. Uses different size circles to indicate relationships between mayor and subordinate information. The more important information are in larger circles than less important ideas. Lines from one circle to another indicate that the concepts in the connected circles are related in some way.  This style of note-taking gives students a visual representation. The disadvantage of this strategy is that it limits the amount of information a student can record because the circles themselves can hold only so many words.
Other visual representation styles includes: graphs, diagrams, pictures, flow charts that show sequence; or venn diagrams that compare and contrast; etc. There are many other.

3. Combination notes. This is a flexible style that uses both informal outlines and visual representations. Each page of notes is divided into two halves. One one half you take notes using the informal outline style and in the other half you take notes using the visual representations to organize at the information. Finally, at the bottom of the page, students write a summary statement for the notes. 

The characteristics of good notes are:
1. Contain all the relevant information presented in the learning experience.
2. Organized in a way that captures the main ideas and any important supporting ideas
3. Formatted (organized) in way that  makes it easy to see relationships among the information presented in notes. 

Good note-taking practices:
1. Develop a personal style and ability to change style depending on learning experience.
2. After writing notes, one should analyze notes. Decide if you need to re-write and/or reorganize them.  3. Re-read them varios time before test.


In order to improve, we must self-reflect. Therefore....

Assigment: Write a reflection (paragraph form).
Title: Reflection on my Current Beliefs and Practices--Note Taking
Your reflection should answer the following questions:
1. What is my purpose of taking notes in class? Be honest!!!!
2. What is my personal style of note-taking?
3. What do I do with my notes after I take them?
4. How can one of the styles of note-taking Mrs. Home presented to me help me improve my notes?
5. Compare your notes on Obama and Clinton. Explain how they are different. Did they improve or not? Why or why not?

Work due on Wednesday, Sept. 19:

  • KWL chart on President Obama, Democratic nominee for President
  • Detailed, organized notes on Obama DNC speech
  • Detailed, organized notes on Clinton DNC speech
  • Candidate Research Team Handout for Obama
  • KWL chart on Mitt Romney, Republican nominee for President
  • Detailed, organized notes on Romney RNC speech
  • Candidate Research Team Handout for Romney
  • Reflection on my Current Beliefs and Practices--Note Taking
  • Extra credit: Detailed, organized notes from any speech presented at the RNC in support of Romney
Useful links:

Extra Credit that will help you further deepen your knowledge of the presidential campaign.





No comments:

Post a Comment