Taking Notes from Lecture - Learning Techniques for Tutors and Mentors
I. Assessment
Check the student's notes. They should be legible, dated, and written on one side of the page only. There should be spaces between the main ideas and marks and underlining to denote emphasis. Indentations should distinguish main ideas from details.
There are a number of Web sites with strategies for taking lecture notes:
lecture notes Web sites
listening and concentrating Web sites
II. Assistance
Editing Notes:
Help the students expand their notes. Underline or highlight main ideas. Look up key terms to clarify notes. Have the students write a summary or questions in the margins.
Taking notes this way and writing questions within 24 hours in the margins is a very efficient way of studying. The students are reviewing before too much forgetting takes place and are organizing material in their memory in preparation for a test.
Have the students make their next set of notes in duplicate by using carbon paper. Analyze them together at the next tutor session.
Go to one the class sessions with the student. Compare your lecture notes with the student's notes.
The Instructor:
The instructor uses many ways to indicate to the student what is important. Discuss some of these ways with students.
- Voice - tone, loud, soft
- Body language - pointing, gestures with hands, moving about the room
- Repetition of ideas
- Writing on chalkboard
©2004 Dr. Gretchen Starks-Martin, St. Cloud State University
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