There are many ways to take notes. Regardless of how you do it, note taking can help you pay attention to what you are reading or listening to and remember it. It can also help you more fully understand concepts by piecing together academic content with your own thoughts and experiences. Plus, your notes can be a time-saving reference for you in the future.

It’s helpful to try out a few note taking methods to see what works best for you. Here are some different methods to consider:

Cornell Notes

Cornell notes set up a specific structure to organize and summarize your thoughts. They look like this:

All notes from the lecture content go into the main note-taking column on the right. The column on the left side is for questions about the notes that can be answered when reviewing or keywords and comments. A brief summary should be written into the section at the bottom to bring everything together.

Outline Notes

Outline notes structure your thoughts in a logical way. They look like this:

• This is a main topic
  • This is a subtopic
    • This is a thought or supporting fact

Creating an outline helps you easily refer back to the main points of lecture content and also helps you see relationships between various thoughts and ideas.

Paragraph Notes

You may consider paragraph notes to keep track of the sequence of important ideas and details being presented to you. To use this style, write down your notes and leave spaces (start a new paragraph) each time there is a new point. Use abbreviations and shorthand to be more efficient. When you’re done taking paragraph notes, consider transcribing them into an outline or concept map as part of your review process.

Paragraph notes might look like this:

Social structure is how env’t influences interactions among people who participate in that env’t. Well-organized social structure → positive peer interactions, supports adult-child interactions (sustain children’s involvement in learning) + facilitates communication and organization among staff.

Educators can help children stay engaged in an activity by clearly communicating to them what they will learn by participating in it. Before beginning activity– talk about what children will learn. During activity–make statements to remind children and direct their focus to activity goals. After activity–summarize what children learned.