Effective Ways of Note-Making and its Benefits

Effective note-making is an important practice that any learner or educator should become habitual. Note-making is a learning process in itself as it helps in understanding the information that the learner receives and processes and absorbs. Note-making becomes the utmost important when a student goes through a lot of new knowledge in a class and should be able to store the same and retrieve it from his/her memory whenever necessary or required.

Kaintal Senior School, ICSE school in Patiala presents you with some exceptional note-making benefits:

1.Alertness: Note-making keeps the mind and body active.

2. Mind Engagement: Listening carefully and what to include in notes keeps the mind engaged and actively involved.

3. Organizes Information: To understand and remember the knowledge, note-making provides a record of what a child has learned and sets up a base for the exam revision.

Active listening is an essential part of note-taking, and only a few students are taught how to do this. As learning begins with listening and without active listening, one cannot take notes effectively.

Now, let’s discuss some note-making methods for formatting and structuring. Some ways work well for some students than others:

1. General Note-taking: This method includes writing down the key points delivered by the lecturer or teacher in the classroom. One develops his system of shorthand and draws various pictures or diagrams to make it more visual.

2. Mind Mapping Technique: It is a technique wherein different facts and ideas are related which enhances creative problem solving. It contains lists and sequences, usually visuals which use both left and right brain functioning. The mind-mapping framework helps the student to think from general to specific and keeps the subject in perspective.

3. The Outline Format: It is a highly logical structure and a formal way of outlining the information using Roman numeral for main topics, Arabic for supporting details, and making use of keywords and short phrases throughout the outline.

4. The Cornell Format: In this method of note-making, the student divides the page into two parts, one for note-taking, which is bigger than the other part, i.e. questions/keyword columns. At the bottom, it contains the summary of each page.

Note-taking techniques differ in the style of each subject matter. One method that might work for an English subject might not work the same way for Mathematics. Students need to develop the habit of making notes to remember what they have learned and understood the concepts in a much profound way.

One of the best schools in Patiala, Kaintal School, develops the practice of note-making among their students to make them successful learners.