today's workshop is called taking better lecture
notes and just a quick word about the one next week it's called how to predict test questions
this is the first one of five workshops in a row I think it is that all have that terrible t
word in it which is tests or tests so it's kind of a long series in how to become a great test
taker which always helped okay so that's what's coming up next week now I wanted to ask everybody
a question before we start and again participation is welcome in these workshops we're talking about
taking notes while teachers are lecturing today so my question is kind of a simple one but I know
if you've ever thought of this why is it important or helpful for you to take notes while a teacher
is talking what's the whole point of even doing that to remember yeah one of the things that is
the simplest way I can describe it is you want to take notes so that you don't have to rely on your
memory later on you could be a fantastic listener and you can concentrate really well on the teacher
but unless you have an amazing ability to remember that two or three or four weeks later when you're
studying for a test on that material it's almost impossible to remember what a teacher said that's
why you want to rely on your notes and if your notes are good and they're complete and you can
study a lot from them you should do better as a result the class that I teach which is learn 11
the study skills course my students are required on every test among other things to do a short
writing probably less than a page where they describe in detail something that I've taught them
in class kind of like they're teaching it back to me and very often amazingly often especially
early in the semester I get a student who writes as their answer I don't remember and how many
points do they get for that the big zero right and so what they're basically saying is I was
there that day it was like three weeks ago I remember what you were talking about even remember
what you were wearing but I can't quite remember what you said and they're trying to actually go
back and remember that's dangerous so that's why you write it in your notes so that you can go over
it and over it and when the test comes it's still fresh in your mind that's the goal okay so as I
mentioned a few minutes ago I'm going to give you a handout that is sort of an outline of what I'm
going to talk about hopefully I'll be able to get all the way through this today there's always a
lot that I would love to share and never enough time so I'll go ahead and just sort of give you a
bunch you can kind of pass them back if there are extras back there you can just hold on to them and
I'll get them at the end and actually let me put some here in case people show up late okay so in
order to take better lecture notes there are seven things listed here a couple of little sub points
so this will hopefully be easy for you to follow people who are really good note takers and there
aren't that many of them actually because that's a skill end up doing almost all or all of these
things regularly it's just a habit people who are not good note takers don't do any of these or
maybe they just do one so if you can learn to do them you'll be better at note-taking the most
people the first one on the list has nothing to do with taking notes in class it just has to
do with preparing for lectures there are two suggestions there and I don't know if anybody
here does these already or not but they're actually very simple but very helpful when the
lecture starts the first one of these so this is the little sub point under number one is to review
the notes and what notes are we talking about here with right the previous notes from the last time
you were in class most teachers when they lecture when that's their main way of teaching when they
come into the classroom they put everything down they might take role and then usually they don't
review a lot they just sort of hit the ground running right where they left off the time before
if it's been five days if it's been a week since you were in there last time it's really hard to
remember what the teacher was talking about at the end of class and as a result it's there's hard
to focus at the beginning so if you were to spend five to ten minutes before class right before
or earlier that morning or even the night before just kind of remembering that it helps and then
the other one that's part of that is previewing the textbook and so if you have a teacher who
lectures basically from the textbook so every time you go there's a chapter covered for you to
spend fifteen minutes before you go to class and become familiar with the main terms the summary
all of that it helps you when the teacher talks to start following them right from the beginning it's
kind of warming up your brain and so these again might take a total of twenty or thirty minutes to
do number one but it actually helps a lot when the lecture begins so this is a very basic one and
there's a lot more that I could say about that but I'm going to go ahead and move on the second
one on the list is something that I always explain to my students early in the semester very early
and that is when in doubt write it down that's my rule for note-taking are you able to write
down everything the teacher says no unless you are the fastest writer ever so that means all
the time while you're listening to the teacher you have to make choices should I write that do I
not need to write that and sometimes it's really hard to tell whether you should write something
or not is that important or not some teachers are really good about telling you this is really
important write it down that's nice but most teachers don't do that they just talk and so one
of the reasons that you want to do these things is so that when you get to class and you listen
to the teacher you already have an idea of what's important in the book or what was made important
last time and then you can make good choices but the other part of this is if you're ever in a
class and the teachers talking fast and you're trying to write things down and you're trying
to decide if you get to a point where they're saying something and you hesitate and you think
should I write that or not what's the best thing to do write it down okay it's much better to make
a mistake on the side of writing too much in your notes rather than not enough and oftentimes in
my class I see students looking at me and paying attention to me and so that's nice to see but
then I make several points in a row and I look and they just are sitting there just like it's
a conversation and they're listening to me but they're not writing any of it down and that makes
me always very nervous because there may be a test two weeks or three weeks later and I know that
most of them aren't going to remember anything of what I said if you write it down and as I said
before you get to go back and review it later so if you're ever wondering it's like 50/50 should I
write that or not go ahead and write it if you're pretty much sure it's not important go ahead and
skip it but it's better to write too much than not at all okay so that's very simple principle
number two okay now for these next couple I'm going to slow down a little take a little more
time number three is my my main advice that I give students about note-taking and that's to go on a
diet which sounds like a very strange suggestion anyone want to guess what I mean by that hmm and
down you're pretty yeah that's right when somebody goes on a diet and they lose a lot of weight what
happens to their body yeah shrinks right that's what you're trying to do now I just got through
telling you that the number one mistake that most people make is that they don't write enough
they sit and listen but they don't write enough that's a problem the second most common problem
is this and that is once their hand starts moving and they start writing they write way too many
words and every time you're writing these words the teacher is always talking faster than your
writing which means you're falling further and further behind it gets very frustrating especially
if your teacher really is fast like a lot of them are and so what you should do is learn to go
on a diet there are actually several ways to do that but I'm going to show you one and kind of
illustrate it and then give you another one two ideas okay the first one so again this is under
number three is to learn how to use abbreviations a lot when you take notes most of you who take
notes now probably use a few of those but I want you to learn how to use even more and so I want
to ask a question before I show you what I have in mind here some people I asked you do you use
abbreviations when you take notes and they say oh no no no I would never do that and I ask them why
and what do you think their reason is yeah they're they're terrified and this is a good fear they're
terrified that they're going to forget what that's an abbreviation of and then when they go back
to their notes they don't even understand them so that's a problem okay but I have something in
mind for you so let me show you this if you were in a history class and you walked in on the day of
the lecture and your teacher said today in class we're going to talk about the period of history in
our country after the Civil War which was called reconstruction so that's the whole subject of the
lecture well you're going to have to write that word reconstruction a lot you don't want to write
that a lot it's a very long word and also and some of you who are taking more technical classes if
you don't know how to spell a word that slows you down even more because you're trying to get it
right so I want to write the word reconstruction here and I know how to spell it so that makes
it faster but just look you don't have to time it on your watch or anything but look how long it
takes me even if I write fast to write that word okay what is the teacher doing while I'm writing
that yeah talking if you ever get a teacher who says that's a long word I'll wait while you
all write it down you should almost have a heart attack they never do that they're just
talking okay so while you're writing they're getting further and further away from you and
so this is a mistake well one abbreviation that people sometimes think of for this would be
something like this and that's a lot shorter and even though it doesn't seem like it matters
that much every second is kind of important when you're racing to stay up with the teacher so this
would be good what's wrong with this abbreviation yeah this could stand for lots of things right
and that's what we were talking about before you don't want to get confused about that but I'm
going to give you a suggestion and I know this is going to sound like a bad idea but you just have
to sort of hang with me for a minute my favorite abbreviation of this word is not this or this
it's this and that's a real abbreviation that's like a diet down to one letter now what I'm not
saying is that when you abbreviate things that it should always be one letter anything you do
to make it shorter is good but this looks like a terrible idea why because that could stand for
thousands of words right and can you imagine if you wrote notes and you thought of this really
good abbreviation and you used it all over the page and then you looked at it like three weeks
later before the test and you have no I what are is that's bad that's really bad so this brings
me back to the first point that I made on the outline and that is to prepare for lectures one of
the things a lot of people do which doesn't take very long and is very smart is that when they're
looking through their notes or their textbook especially their book and they happen to notice
that there are certain words that keep coming up over and over again in the book because it's the
main subject of the chapter they realize when I go to class tomorrow or later today I'm going to have
to write that word a lot and I don't want to write it so what they do is they find a sheet of paper
they write the word abbreviations at the top and they abbreviate that and then in this example
they would write R equals and then write the word reconstruction and then they look in that
same chapter and they notice the President of the United States during most of that time was
a man named Andrew Johnson and what is a good abbreviation for Andrew Johnson yeah AJ but all of
you have had history classes you know that there are hundreds of names in there and so there could
be another AJ you don't want to get that mixed up so you go back to your little page and you write
AJ equals Andrew Johnson and maybe just write two or three more when you get to class and you're
ready to take notes and I'm sitting next to you and I haven't even looked at the book I don't even
know what the lecture is about at all as soon as the teacher comes in and says today we're going
to talk about Andrew Johnson and reconstruction and then they just start talking really fast I'm
sitting there reconstruction and I'm going really slowly and you're writing your abbreviation
down and then going fast and then when you go back later to review your notes you don't have to
remember now what was a J what was R because it's on your little key so it takes your memory out of
it which is good so especially when a teacher of yours lectures from the book you can look ahead of
time and try to make a little strategy like this and again it doesn't very long but it helps
when the time comes so that's what I mean by abbreviations and I'm going to show you a couple
more examples in just a little while and then the other part of this number three talking about
going on a diet with your notes is this I'm going to say this two different ways one is leave out
unimportant words okay when you're writing notes in class are your notes supposed to be usually
beautiful full sentences no and what some people do is they write these beautiful sentences all
the way out and that slows them down because again you're trying to shrink what you do so what
you want to do is make your notes something that an English teacher would have a heart attack
looking at because it's terrible English and all that terrible grammar and as a result it's all
choppy all kinds of words are taken out and it's just the basic words that you need and again I'm
going to show you how this looks in a few minutes people find this sometimes hard to do at first
because they're thinking all right you want me to use abbreviations and you want me to leave out
unimportant words so they're trying to listen to the teacher and write good notes and remember
to use abbreviations and remember what words to take out and it just seems like it's too hard
but if you practice it enough you start getting really good and really fast at it and again I'm
going to show you what it looks like actually in writing in just a little while so these are the
two parts of going on a diet okay now the next one on the list is number four which is know
your instructor and this could mean a lot of different things but I have one specific idea
and then a follow up to it the first one is to understand your teachers lecture style so this
is the first part of that their lecture style okay you know that from your experience as a
student whether that's a lot of experience or a little you know that every teacher has a different
way that they get their material across how many of you have a teacher this semester who uses the
screen and shows PowerPoint or something similar to that got any oh and a few multi of you how
about teachers who write on the board got some of those okay some people give handouts go off
of that okay and then other people other teachers just stand there and talk you have nothing to look
at it's just talk talk talk for two or three hours okay that makes it hard so what I mean by the
lecture style is what does your teacher want you to write in the notes okay some teachers are very
good about telling you ahead of time this is what you should write but quick question for you when
you see something on a board that somebody wrote or it's on the screen like on a PowerPoint should
you write those things down in your note what do you think yeah the answer to that officially
is not sure it depends on the teacher okay some teachers if you ask them I noticed that you use
the board a lot or that you have the PowerPoint am I supposed to be writing all that down some
teachers you know what they'll say they'll say yes that's why I'm writing it up there and so you
need to write it but there are other teachers who say you don't have to write all that down it's
all in your book I'm just giving you all of that as a visual aid so you can follow me better when
I teach and you can write a little of it but you don't have to sit there writing like crazy those
of you who have teachers who use PowerPoint if you've ever had this teachers don't understand how
long it takes for people to write things down and so they're clicking clicking clicking to the next
one and you almost get a sore neck trying to write all that down and sometimes you need to write
it but sometimes you don't so you're trying to understand early in the semester if for every
teacher because they're all different what do you want me to write how do you want me to write
the notes okay and then the other part of this is this I'm going to sort of introduce this first
before I write it on the board there is a habit that you can get into doing that I bet nobody
here has ever done in your life that will take you less than five minutes and it'll help your
notes to be much better after that and should help you get better grades so that should sound
pretty good it's just a few minutes of your time and it helps everything get better and here's
what it is when you show up to most college classes the very first day what does the teacher
usually do the first day talks about the class so they they usually give you the syllabus they
explain what you're going to be doing the rules usually they don't lecture very much unless it's
a like a three hour class and so they just kind of introduce the class right then the second time
you go that's usually the start right so this is the first lecture and unless you've had that
teacher before which you probably haven't this is the first experience you've ever had watching
this person teach and listening to them it's all new to you right so here's the little habit when
the first lecture of the semester is over and the teacher says I'll see you next week and everybody
starts walking out the door what I want you to do is not walk out the door but instead walk up to
your teacher and show the teacher something what are you going to show them yet your notes have you
ever shown a teacher your notes before most people say are you kidding you know I would never do that
because they're sort of embarrassed about them but this is one of the best things that you can ever
do the reason for that you go and start that with you the reason for that is this there are a few
teachers a few who will not react very well to this but most teachers will really react well if
you walk up after the first lecture your teacher doesn't really know who you are yet they're still
learning the names so you would go up to them as they're getting ready to leave the room and you'd
say you'd introduce yourself and then you'd say I wonder if you could do me a really big favor if
you I took notes today I don't have any idea if these notes are good for what I need in this class
or not so could you just take a minute or two and look at the notes and just give me an idea of if
whether I'm on the right track or whether they're way off okay every once in a while a teacher won't
help you but most teachers will be so excited that you actually care that much to ask them just to
look at your notes that they'll be very happy to and so here's what will happen the teacher says oh
sure that's fine and so you give them your notes and they put it on the podium right in front of
them I know that that's a little bit scary for you to stand there watching the teacher evaluate
your notes but here's what will happen sometimes not very often but sometimes the teacher will
look at your notes and then they'll say yeah these are good these are good and you say really
okay that's good and then how if that's the case if that happens how are you going to take notes
every time you go to class after that yeah same way right but is that usually going to happen no
instead here's what's going to happen you give your notes to the teacher yeah sure let me look
at them and then while you're standing there the teacher starts looking through your notes and
starts making this sound that only teachers can make it's like this oh and they'll look at you
and say no no these really aren't very good now if they say that to you I know what you want to
say back you want to look at them and say well if you just talk slower then I could let it and this
is not time to get into an argument that's bad but what you do is this and a lot of students have
taken me up on this and have done it they said oh these notes really aren't that good for this
glass and they say no they're not can you show me an example of where I messed up and so here's what
the teacher might do they might look on your notes and they say okay see right here you wrote this
little phrase in your notes and you look at it and say yep there it is looks good I wrote that
and they said I'm glad you wrote that because I put it on the board but they'll say I talked about
that subject for over 10 minutes and that's all I see on your paper there are no notes about it
at all and so you might say well the reason I didn't write anything down is that you were just
giving examples and I didn't really think it was that important to write the examples down and so
the teacher might say in this class whenever I say the words for example right the next thing
that I say so in other words they're teaching you how to take notes for them and every teacher
is different for this and so if you show them bad notes and they point out how to make them better
than your notes after that should be better and then your grades should go up here's what people
do all the time which is kind of sad they go first lecture of the semester they take notes and the
notes are really bad they don't know they're bad but they're just bad the next time they come how
do they take notes same way same way bad bad bad bad bad bad and then they gather all their notes
their bad notes to study for their first test and how do they do on the test bad but if they take
notes bad notes once and then they fix them from then on because they know what the teacher said
then their notes are better better better and then their grades usually are better also so the the
little section they're under no your instructor would be you can say it this way show the notes to
the teacher early in the semester for evaluation that's probably the best way to say it you could
do that even now I know it's the seventh week and it would have been good to do it like the first or
second week but if you're taking a lot of notes in your class now and you're not even sure if you're
even close to being what you're supposed to be as a note taker it wouldn't hurt even now to go up
to the teacher afterward and say this is how I've been taking notes all semester should I change
something or do these look good and then just let the teacher tell you and it'll help a lot okay
so that's the concept of no your instructor any questions on any of these four so far we're going
to get to the last couple which are important but want to make sure you're all clear on those we're
good okay so the number five on the list is use a good note-taking system or method there are
actually a lot of ways to take notes and when I ask students this question I almost always get
the same answer I say when you take notes what method do you use and most people look at me what
method and I said yeah they say well mine in other words I just sort of write stuff I kind of made
it up in order to be a good note-taker because every teacher is different you need to have more
than one way of taking notes if you had like three or four different ways that would be good one of
those ways would probably be your favorite one and it would usually work but you're going to get into
a class where that just doesn't work and it's good to have plan B and Plan C well the one that I want
to show you some of you may be already familiar with but this method of notetaking actually works
very well for a lot of students it's not perfect and it doesn't work for everyone equally but it
has a good track record so I want to go through this with you for a couple minutes and teach it
to you and then I'm going to show you an example of this so that you can really get a good idea of
how it looks in practice okay excuse me so this is called the Cornell note-taking system and you can
always read the information these steps later on but for right now to make this easier I want you
to go ahead and turn to the backside and look at the little diagram there okay and so what I want
to do this is just a kind of a visual aid for you I want to show you how notes are taken this way
and then I'm going give you an example and show you why they're helpful for a lot of students okay
so here's what you do to take notes in the Cornell method normally unless you have very strange
notebook paper your paper has a little margin on the left side right and so what you do to do this
is you go up to the very top line and you do this ahead of time and you have to prepare your paper
and it takes five seconds to prepare it so about as easy as it gets you go to the top line right
at the margin you go in about one more inch and then you draw a line down you stop about five six
lines from the bottom and you draw another line across and you just do that on every piece of
paper that you're going to use so that's pretty easy when you've done you've drawn these two lines
you've divided your notes into three parts this big part right here which is where you're going to
take notes during class and then this wide margin and this bottom part and you're not going to do
anything with these during the lecture this is for afterward and so then when the teacher starts
teaching you're going to be writing notes in this section and the one difference between the way you
may take notes now and the way this asks you to is that you're going to be writing some things right
here at the margin and you're going to be writing other things in further on the page and so what
goes here at the margin is what it is listed right here and by the way in when you do this with your
notes you're not supposed to write the words main idea and supporting details on the paper it just
shows where they go again it's kind of a diagram but here's the way this looks the teacher is going
to be a history teacher again and they're going to teach you today about many causes of the Civil
War so that's the subject of the lecture first thing they say is the first cause of the civil
war in this country was the economic problems in the country at the time so that's the first main
idea the first subject you write that here then they give you details probably more details than
you want all those details get written here then they say let's go on to the second cause of the
Civil War which was slavery and you go back here and write that then you write the details about
it and that's basically the way you take notes during the class again nothing over here nothing
down here just the notes and one quick question about this and that is we talked about the idea
of trying to go on a diet with your notes as much as possible on which part of these would you need
to go on a diet more the main ideas or the details yeah the details and the reason is because you
want to make sure you get the main ideas really clearly down it's the details that most teachers
fire at you way too fast and that's where you have to abbreviate leave out unimportant words and
again I'll show you an example of this in a little bit now if you're still taking notes when you get
down here near the end of the class the bottom of this page is not here because you're saving this
for later it's right there then you would go to another piece of paper or the backside and just
keep doing what you're doing with those two lines written and that's how you take notes during the
class okay when the class is over then it's time to review and part of the way you review is to
fill this out and the other one is to fill this out and I'm going to show you examples of that
as we go when you look here at the diagram you see that off in this left margin it talks about
key words or titles and then at the bottom it's a summary so what does that exactly look like well
if we take this as an example let's say that you wrote in your notes one cause of civil war was
economic problems in the country right across from it after class you would write the same thing
that you wrote here except just shorter just a few words like a title so you might write economic
problems and then you'd slide down and read second cause of civil war with slavery and you'd
write the word slavery here and then you do that all the way down so that's what these titles look
like and then the last thing you do is to write a short summary just a couple of sentences where
you name the main ideas again and maybe give a couple of details and then when you're that's it
that's kind of a package deal alright now I want to show you an example of how this works and then
I'm going to give you a sort of an explanation of why this tends to help a lot ok so let me go
ahead and give you this this should look at least sort of familiar to you ok because it's
the same form as what I just explained but this is what it looks like again actually having been
taken I think that's right ok so this is a these are notes from a lecture in a biology class and
they all deal with poisonous animals as you can see there and so the person who took these notes
wrote the main ideas which were the animals that were being discussed and then all kinds of details
about each one went back out to the margin details back out etc same form all of this on the left
all of this on the bottom again was not touched during class at all I want to have you take a
look at all of this and I know that you haven't actually heard this lecture but I just want to
show you a few things I talked about leaving out unimportant words abbreviating if you look
at the very top of the page where it says arrow poison frog the very first fact listed there
even though you've never heard this before I bet you can figure out what it says what does
it say rainforest and what's the other part yes all right see this is hard going backwards
from not having heard it right what this what this first phrase was in the lecture was
this animal the arrow poison frog lives in the rainforests of South and Central America
okay that's what that means and there are 40 types they're all less than two inches long etc
etc okay so rather than writing they live in the rainforests of South and Central America which
would take you forever you try to figure out a way to shorten words to abbreviate and just
write it like a skeleton without any meat on it that's the way I describe the notes and
again if you gave this to an English teacher they'd have a heart attack looking at it because
it's all terrible no correct spelling grammar it doesn't matter okay as long as you understand
what it means that's the important thing also remember I said a little while ago that doing a
little research ahead of time and figuring out some abbreviations you're going to use is very
helpful well if you look in the upper corner of the page you see where it says P equals
poison this person knew that this lecture was going to be about poisonous animals and
they thought I'm going to have to write the word poison poisonous poisoned all the time I
don't want to write that it takes too long so they came up with a little key that every time
they have to write any of those words they're going to just put a capital P and if you look
down the list you see a lot of capital P's and that saved precious seconds that they could use
them to keep up with the teacher again it's like a race that you're trying to keep up so this is
the way the notes actually look and then there's a summary at the bottom which mentions the names
of the three animals again and gives a few little details about each one okay now everything that
you see here should look familiar based on what I taught you about this and even though I went
through it quickly there's one thing though on here that should not look familiar because
I didn't say anything about it what is that yeah besides the summary is the numbers okay
I didn't say anything about numbers so what is that well I'm going to show you that in a second
turn to the back side if you would these notes are exactly the same as these everything is the
same front and back except one big thing which is all these little words out to the side okay so
if you take a quick look back at your outline for this workshop you see number six there which says
review your notes interactively now how do you think most people review their notes when they
go back to study them what do you think they do with them or what do you do with your notes yeah
how do you review them yeah what most people do is they totally try to read them figure out what
they wrote and then if they have time after that what do they do read them again and then if they
have time they read them again and they just hope that if they look at it enough that somehow it'll
get in their brain and they'll remember it for the test well that's studying your notes reviewing
them but it's not the best way to do it the best way to do it is interactively and what that means
is this I'll show you this example we take this that's already been taken in the Cornell method
and take a blank sheet of paper or your hand or a book or whatever and you cover up the entire page
except for that left column and then you read the first title out loud to yourself and then what's
the next thing you do yeah you test yourself right so you say okay and that's what these numbers are
I'm supposed to know seven things about the arrow poison frog what are they and you actually test
yourself and then when you're done you go back and say okay I got that one I got that one I got that
one wrong so you make a little note I forgot that one completely and so that's what interactive
means is that you're testing yourself not just staring at them but testing yourself and when you
cover up the majority of the page what is this age more like now as a study tool what do you
have what what do you use as a study tool that has two sides to it yeah flashcards right so you
test yourself and you try to learn what's on the back well you don't even have to do that with
these because they're actually already in that form you have one side and the second side and
then even better than that even though it's not necessary or required when you go to the other
side it's a lot easier to test yourself when you have these little words that prompt your memory
because if you're on the front side you're just saying okay I'm supposed to know seven things
about the arrow poison frog what are they and you're trying to remember here you're actually
able to say okay where where do they live how many types are there what's the size and it makes
you learn the material faster and so you always know if your notes are good if you're able to go
back to them later and test yourself from them to get ready for the test and if you can't really
test yourself on them at all you all you can do is this look at them they're not very helpful so
this format the reason I like this format a lot is because then you're able to fill things out on the
left and then cover up and test yourself and see what you know and what you don't know and then
keep testing yourself till you know at all and then when the test comes the real one you should
do very well okay so that's the meaning behind studying the notes or reviewing it interactively
okay and then the last thing that I wanted to share with you just for a couple minutes has to
do with number seven which is type or rewrite your notes and by the way I should say one more thing
about this Cornell method that's kind of important and that is this method of notetaking does not
work equally well with every teacher the kind of teacher that this works the best with is a very
organized teacher who seems to be following some kind of an outline when they teach all of you I
think have had teachers like that where everything is just step two step two step but all of you have
probably also had at least a few teachers they didn't teach that way at all it seemed like they
were making it up as they went along and they're just all over the place it's really hard to take
notes in this method when the teacher talks about one thing and then a second thing and then they
say more things about the first thing and they're just all over so if you have an organized teacher
this works great if your teachers not like that at all then you may need to figure out another
way to do it but this is a something that's kind of important for you to know so as far as number
seven goes and by the way is this did the sign-in sheet make it to the back okay just want to make
sure that's right somebody brought it up I want to take a look at these before I have you go type
or rewrite your notes do you think if you took time to type up your notes on your computer
or rewrite them on paper that they would be better than the notes you took originally you
know the chances are really good the answer is yes okay but and so everybody kind of understands
that but then I say okay so why don't you do that with your notes and everybody says you want me
to rewrite them you want me to type them up you know it seems like I don't have time for that it
takes a lot of effort and I understand that okay I've even had a few people say so you think it's
important to type up your notes or rewrite and I said yes it's very helpful and they actually
handed me their notes and say could you do that for me and I said no first of all I'm really busy
but second of all that misses the whole point and so what I wanted you to be aware of for this is
when you're sitting there at your computer and you're reading your notes and you're trying to
figure out how to say them better or you have paper and you're trying to rewrite them you're
not just copying everything but you're trying to redo them what are you doing basically while
you're rewriting them are typing up yeah you're reading them over and you're thinking about them
which means you're reviewing them which is really good and so the act of doing that of typing or
rewriting your notes is review its study and then when you're done you have notes that are better
than the ones you took in class and so you may not be able to do this with every class you have
but if you have one class in particular where the teacher talks really fast or gives a huge amount
of information one of the best things you could do later that day or that night while it's still
sort of fresh is to go back over your notes and type them up or rewrite them and then the notes
are better you've studied while you were doing it is all good so I know it seems like a hassle
like it takes time but there's a lot of benefit to doing it so I would definitely recommend that
okay let me take a quick look here and always I want to make sure I can read these Michelle
Michelle okay Oh Jen okay just want to make sure I've got the names right onto the moon okay
good all right so I'll email all these teachers later today remember next week is the workshop
on how to predict test questions I think that's kind of a helpful thing so I'd love to see you
back for that one and thanks for coming today you