Tip #103 from 365 Teacher Secrets from Parents (McKinley & Trombly) - Note-taking

 

Today's tip for parents from two talented teachers comes from 365 Teacher Secrets for Parents by Cindy McKinley Alder and Patti Trombly.

#103

Notes on Note Taking

 

Learning is like rowing upstream; not to advance is to drop back.

~ Chinese proverb

 

In Idea #95, you read about SQ3R. During reading, this method suggests that your child take notes in some way while she is reading. There are several good strategies for doing this so that she can later look back and easily see the most important parts of what she read. It is nice to show your child a wide variety of options and then let her choose what she prefers. We don’t all take notes in the same way. We also do not take notes the same way each time we do it ourselves. However, if we have lots of options we know about, we can pull from them and decide which would work best for us in any given situation. Here are two very helpful strategies.

HIGHLIGHTING: One terrific way to mark important information is to highlight it. However, if we just hand a kid a highlighter, chances are most of the text will end up highlighted! They simply love to use them and often don’t know how to tell important information from not-so-important information. We have to show children how to pick and choose only the most important info to highlight. A good way to do this is to read NOT with a highlighter in her hand, but just a pencil. This first time she reads through something, she doesn’t yet know what is or is not very important. So, instead of highlighting the things she thinks may be important, have her underline them. (Too much pencil is not nearly as distracting as too much bright yellow!) Then, when she is all done reading and knows what the whole text was about, she will better know what the main ideas were. Now, she can choose a few things per page to highlight. In general, some good things to highlight are answers to questions, first sentences of paragraphs (which often contain main ideas) and parts of beginning and/or last paragraphs which also usually contain main ideas. Remember the goal of highlighting is to look back at a page later and see just a few, most important ideas. Highlighting makes the important information stand out from the rest of the text. Then, when it’s time to review or study, she can simply read the highlighted text and remember the important points. If too much is highlighted on a page, she will have to reread the whole text, which will not save her time and doesn’t help her quickly remember the main ideas.

NOTES- Taking notes on a separate piece of paper, or right there on the text if possible, is another good way to remember the important stuff. You can even show her short cuts to note-taking like codes. For instance, instead of writing next to a paragraph “this paragraph contains many important ideas” she can pick a code like a star and just draw that at the end of the lines that she finds important. A happy face can mark a part she really liked a lot quicker even than writing a note about it. She can chose codes that make sense to her. Perhaps she might draw an arrow pointing up next to information she needs to look up or research more thoroughly. Or she could use a question mark next to a paragraph she needs to ask a question about or she doesn’t understand. If she is writing a report, you can show her that taking notes on index cards can be more helpful than one sheet of paper because she can later move the cards around and organize them easily.

             

   

     Cindy McKinley Alder                                            Patti Trombly

 

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