Over this past summer, we completed a summer semester. Now I know that I’ve spoken about summer semester before, but I’ll recap real quick. Basically, Summer Semester is a short semester for us to build skills or work through material that isn’t necessarily a typical course. For example, my sons typically review math facts, learn typing, study basic economics, or something similar during summer semester.
This summer, we learned a few note taking methods. My older guys take some online courses, including the math and writing classes at Scio Academy, and I noticed that they rarely took notes. Part of this is my fault since I hadn’t explicitly set the expectations for note taking and hadn’t taught them how to take notes. I’ve modeled note taking, but found that they needed just a little bit more. Thus, summer semester presents the best opportunity to fill in the note taking skill gap.
For this short course, I used various online articles, YouTube videos, and blogs to create a simple overview of note taking. We also used a text to practice our new note taking skills. Each of my children had a different text to practice note taking. I love this idea of killing two birds with one stone. For example, not only was my senior practicing the specifics of a new skill, but he was also reviewing his study of debate.
The basic methods that we covered during our summer semester were:
1. Basic Outline Note taking
This is what everyone thinks about when they take notes. It’s simple and clear. You arrange the lecture or text by topic and organize notes below indenting each line as you delve deeper into a topic. This helps you create your own essential study guide for the material.
2. Cornell Note taking Method
This is a great note taking method for encouraging students to go further into the study of a topic. When a student has a question or thought, then they have to place to write them and follow up later. This method also offers a summary section for the student to take time after the lecture to summarize what they have learned, or recap the big idea.
3. Mapping Method
The mapping method has students write the main topic in the center of their page and then make connections on the outside. As a mathematician, I find it difficult to review material from a schematic of circles and boxes. However, for our artistic students this is a perfectly natural way to organize and learn new information.
4. Charting Method
The charting method is similar to mapping, only it’s more like a spreadsheet. Student’s present sub-points in columns of a chart and write information about it below. It is a clear way to organize multiple sub-points for a main topic.
5. Flow Notes Method
Finally, we wrapped up our short tour of note taking by creating our own flow note. The flow notes method comes from the idea that our note taking is for us to review only. You probably already do a part of this when listening to a lecture or sermon. This method is actually best used with another of the methods above and really works well with a verbal lesson. In other words, I don’t recommend it for taking notes from a textbook or reading assignment. This method has students create connections using arrows, symbols for specific words, or even their own shorthand language. For example, when I’m taking notes, I always use the logic symbols to denote things like “all”, “not”, etc. I also draw a lot of arrows, circle bits of information, and use question marks to label a question. This one is fun to learn, fun to create, and fun to practice.
I figured that since we were looking at note taking this month, that I’d share the 5 methods that we recently covered in my homeschool. The boys each have their favorites, as do I, depending on the situation. What methods do you use for note taking? Have you taught your children how to capture information for future review and retention?