Notetaking skills

"I was told to take notes. But I don't know how to do it." Our students and children often share this with us.

Doesn't it seem easy to adults? "Just write down what you hear and understand, it's not hard." As adults we tend to give a murky answer, forgetting that children are, after all, new to almost everything.

When I teach, I believe in explicit teaching of notetaking skills. While I don't see a need to conduct a full course on notetaking (I'll leave that to other experts), I weave instructions while teaching the content. For instance, I say:

I will use blue to write sample sentences in the empty space on the right.
Shall we circle this apostrophe?
Let's draw arrows to link the words.
Here's a symbol to show the word meaning.
Can you draw a picture for this sentence?

Students, especially younger learners, need us to tell and show them how to make notes. They become more empowered in self-directed learning as they do annotation on a regular basis. Eventually, they will develop their personal annotation styles for more effective learning. This is a key part of their executive functions - organisation. Hence it also benefits them in daily life.

Teacher Libing
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