Teaching Students What to Do With the Notes They Take

Note-taking is a critically important skill that teaches organization, paraphrasing, attention to detail, critical thinking, and self-discipline. I have been a strong advocate for efficient note-taking, and I even developed a testing strategy that encourages good notes. Still, is taking good notes enough for students to learn material? Not quite. Students need to do something with their notes.

Employing the write, read, use method encourages students to write (as in write down organized and comprehensive notes), read (read and reread their notes), and use (meaning students must do something with those notes to remember and internalize them). Employing active and illustrative review, reorganization, and practice assessments, as well as other strategies, can help students use their notes to study.

Revisit, Rewrite, and Reorganize

I always encourage handwritten, screen-free note-taking, as there are an increasing number of proven benefits to writing notes by hand.

The first step to studying from notes is just revisiting them. Read the notes over. Sometimes students’ notes are a little messy and unorganized, especially if they’re quickly copied notes from a lecture. Having disordered notes actually presents an opportunity. Students can simply rewrite their notes more legibly, taking care to ensure that they are readable for future use. Ideally, students should consider doing more than simply recopying notes.

Urge students to expand upon their notes where they may be lacking during this rewrite process. This might entail writing full words where they originally just recorded abbreviations. It is also a great time for them to address any questions they might have about their notes. Maybe they took down the name of an individual with whom they aren’t familiar or wrote a date without any further explanation. Even if the students aren’t rewriting their notes in full, it will help them to go back and add information to give the notes clarity and context. This not only makes the notes stronger, but helps students remember key information.

Reorganizing notes can be very helpful, too. Students might reorder notes into new chapters or themes. In other instances, they could structure sections by higher-level concepts such as examples of evolutionary theory in biology or imperialism and colonialism in history.

Suggest to students that they pause as they are rewriting and say important definitions, names, facts, and dates aloud. Speaking has been linked to forming better memories.

Active Review

Active review happens when students freshly interpret or engage in a new, dynamic way with the information and concepts they have written down.

Ask them to identify the core concepts in notes. You might have them isolate different sections and create bullet-point lists or short summaries distilling the key information or takeaways.

Another technique is requiring students to develop a color-coded system for vocabulary, dates, important facts, difficult concepts, etc. Teachers can use their discretion when choosing what facets of the notes they want students to focus on. Students then use highlighters to emphasize definitions or particularly important sections.

Cornell Notes lend themselves to active review. Ask students to review the “cues/questions” or “summary” space at the end of the quarter or lesson in order to review the material.

Prompt students to add their reactions to facts or to jot down questions, comments, or thoughts when reviewing or rewriting their notes. Teachers can suggest what types of annotation or marginalia to make. Ask students, for instance, to write a D above information they definitely think will be on the test and a P for information that they think will possibly be on the test.

Illustrative Review

Ask students to draw the most important concepts, facts, or definitions in their notes. Challenge students by demanding that they do not use any words when drawing and illustrating their notes.

Abstract concepts are particularly difficult to convey through drawing, but doing so can help students remember these higher-level concepts.

Assessments

Testing themselves is a superb way for students to retain information and learn material. Repetition is key, so I tell my students that they need to test themselves repeatedly in order to perfect the recall process.

Students can make flash cards with important information. It’s wise to make different series of flash cards representing different content, be it vocabulary, dates, or other facts from their notes. The more, the better.

Students can also create tests. They can use artificial intelligence for this. If the notes are handwritten, they type them up and upload them to ChatGPT, and ask it to develop tests with multiple-choice, true-or-false, and open-ended questions.

At the end of the day, though, generating one’s own tests without the use of AI can also be a profound learning experience, so I always encourage students to take the time to create their own assessments and share them with peers.

Reteaching the material

Students can use their own notes to create a lesson plan and then reteach the material to peers or the teacher (think of this as an oral exam).

Also ask students to create a lesson for younger pupils. This compels them to simplify the information and present it in a manner suitable for a different audience.

If possible, have students use an assortment of the above techniques throughout the semester. Taking good notes is important, but using them in creative and engaging ways is also crucial for learning.