The Importance Of Taking Notes

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  • Serves as quality review material for after class Using different note taking strategies is important, especially as you progress through high school and transition to college or university. There are several note taking techniques you can use to start taking better notes in class. Start taking better study notes.
  • Taking notes is an important part in learning. Not everything you learn, you will remember. In fact, a lot you will forget, making sure you are taking notes at every opportunity will allow you to look back and perform a task adequately.

A very important issue in note taking is the distinction learning from taking notes and using notes to learn. These processes are distinct and very different issues can be important with each. If notes are not used for review, some learners would be better off note taking notes. Note review does not necessarily depend on the learner taking notes.

Do you ever copy down pages of notes while reading but still struggle to remember what you read? Alternatively, do you read through texts without taking notes and while only half paying attention? Perhaps you highlight or underline your texts but feel like maybe you’re not getting the most from your reading. If you fall into one of these categories, chances are good that you’re not getting the most out of your reading. This handout discusses the importance of taking good notes while reading and provides several different strategies and formats you can try.

The importance of good notes

Taking good notes while reading is an important part of academic success in college. Most courses require significant reading, and it can be difficult to understand and master the material and do well in class without solid note taking and reading skills.

Good notes from your reading can help you:

  • organize your ideas and information from the text
  • keep focused and stay engaged while reading
  • keep a record of what you read so you can more easily locate it in the future
  • think critically about what you read while you read
  • draw conclusions and identify main ideas of the text
  • be prepared for class and build a foundation for lecture
  • have solid materials to use to study for exams or prepare for assignments

How to take good notes while reading

Importance

Good notes can take different forms and may vary from person to person—or even from text to text. One of the key ideas of good note taking is that it is not necessary to copy down loads of information from the text. Copying down information does not engage your brain and is not a strong strategy for learning and remembering content. It also takes a lot of time and energy. In contrast, simply highlighting loads of information is simpler but does not do much to actively engage the brain. Instead of copying down tons of notes or over-highlighting, try some of the active and effective strategies and formats listed below. These will help you decrease the amount of time and energy you spend on notes and increase your comprehension and retention from reading.

Different formats/strategies for notes

There is no one right way to take notes while reading. The important thing is that you experiment with a few effective strategies, find some that work for you, and use them. You may find that different formats or strategies work better for different types of texts, too, and you may want to use different ones for different classes. Below are some examples to try:

Try taking notes from memory

  • Students often miss the opportunity to digest the information from their texts because they’re too busy worrying about taking good notes—instead of actually comprehending the content, they’re thinking more about what they should write down.
  • Try reading short sections of your reading (likely a paragraph or two or up to a page) and pausing to think about what you just read—then take notes from your memory of what you just read. This will help you focus on the main points instead of getting caught up in details.
  • If you are taking notes digitally or online, try creating a Word or Google Document for each article or textbook chapter you have read. Write a summary of the key points from each reading without looking back at the text. Then fill in the details by consulting the reading only after you first have recalled everything you can.
  • It’s okay to not remember 100% of what you just read; focus on the main points, and then refer back to the text to fill in details as needed.
  • This method may take slightly longer, but many students say it’s worth it due to the increase in reading comprehension.
  • Check out our Taking Notes While Reading video for more tips on how to make your notes more efficient and effective.

    • Mark directly on the text

    • If you have a print version that allows it, simply use a pen or pencil. For online texts, some digital programs also allow annotating, highlighting, and commenting.
    • Underline, circle, or highlight key words and phrases—this can be helpful for students who need to do something with their hands to help them stay focused.
    • Annotate margins with symbols, abbreviations, or summaries of the text in your own words. See our annotating handout for more explanation.
    • If you have an online text, you can still record your thoughts, key words, and summaries in this way. Just grab a plain sheet of paper, label it with the text and chapter/page number, and jot them down on the paper instead of in the book.

    Cornell style notes

    • Divide a piece of paper into three sections—approximately two inches blank at the bottom, and the top portion divided into a one-third section on the left and a two-third section on the right.
    • Take notes on the right two-thirds of the page.
    • List key words or questions in the left column.
    • Summarize the entire page in the space at the bottom.
    • Learn more by readinga more detailed explanation of Cornell style notes, or try out of these MS Word templates.

    App-based notes (EverNote and OneNote)

    • EverNote is a popular notetaking app that can sync notes on all your devices. You can organize notes into individual “notebooks” relevant to different classes or topics. Its fans find it useful for general note-taking and class notes as well as for daily tasks and organization.
    • OneNote is an app that comes with Microsoft Office, which is free for UNC students! If you have not downloaded it yet, you can download OneNote here. Much like EverNote, OneNote allows you to sync your notes and access them on any device. You can annotate notes, clip and save multimedia content, and record audio notes.

    Create a graphic organizer or concept map

    • This method is good for texts that have a lot of higher level concepts that require explanations or texts that have remember-level facts, dates, terms, etc.
    • Organize information visually.
    • Differentiate main ideas from support in an appropriate format: concept map, table, flow chart, hierarchy, timeline, or Venn diagram.
    • Good for texts that have a lot of visuals, timelines, etc. like science or history.
    • Generate Your Own Q&A or Study Guide.
    • Formulate questions from headings and keywords before you begin. Then seek answers as you read
    • Are you studying for test a that will require a lot of visual identification? Consider creating your own Pinterest board to organize image-based notes.

    Helpful tips

    • Write notes in your own words instead of copying down information from the book.
    • Avoid over-highlighting. Highlighting doesn’t do much to actively engage the brain, so it’s not the most useful strategy. Also, highlighting too much can keep you from focusing on the main ideas. For tips on highlighting more thoughtfully, see the strategies on our highlighting handout.
    • Wait until the end of a page to take notes so that you can better focus on what you are reading and so that you can try to summarize in your own words rather than copy.
    • You don’t need to write pages of notes—keep them brief and focused.
    • Preview the chapter before you start reading by looking at the text features to gain clues about the main ideas of the chapter.
    • Focus on the main ideas and concepts.

    Other resources

    While taking good notes when reading is important and will go a long way, it’s also helpful to utilize other UNC resources—not just for note taking and reading, but also for any academic area. Check out some of these resources to provide supplemental support:

    Academic Coaching: Make an appointment with an academic coach to talk one-on-one about note-taking—and any other academic concern.
    Office Hours: Make an appointment with your professor or TA to talk about note-taking for his/her specific class/text.
    Related Learning Center handouts: Many of our handouts go into further detail about reading. Check out some of these for additional strategies:

    Works consulted

    “Concept Mapping.” Cornell University. Retrieved from http://lsc.cornell.edu/concept-maps/.

    “The Cornell Note-taking System.” Cornell University. Retrieved from http://lsc.cornell.edu/notes.html.

    “Effective Reading and Note Taking.” MIT. Retrieved from http://uaap.mit.edu/tutoring-support/study-tips/tooling-and-studying/tooling-and-studying-effective-reading-and-note-taking.

    “Reading a Textbook for True Understanding.” Cornell College. Retrieved from https://www.cornellcollege.edu/academic-support-and-advising/study-tips/reading-textbooks.shtml

    “Reading Note Taking Strategies.” UNSW Sydney. Retrieved from https://student.unsw.edu.au/notemaking-written-text

    This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 License.
    You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Learning Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

    If you enjoy using our handouts, we appreciate contributions of acknowledgement.

    The ability to take good notes is crucial for learning and succeeding in school. Whether listening to classroom lectures or reading textbook instruction, students must learn to create useful notes that reinforce understanding and trigger recall of information.

    Good note-taking requires students to mobilize their attentional abilities. Students must be prepared and focused. They must listen or read actively, pulling out important details and attaching new information to prior knowledge. They must learn to record key facts, concepts, and relationships, so that they can recall this information when rereading their notes.

    Good note-taking also depends upon a student’s ability to convert information from the classroom lecture or textbook into a cohesive and meaningful written message, often involving complex explanations, technical vocabulary, or numeric information. This conversion requires students to engage their abilities in both language and spatial and sequential ordering.

    The mechanical aspects of note-taking often depend upon a student’s motor abilities, including the ability to write quickly, easily, and legibly.

    Finally, learning to take good notes is a complex process requiring students to think critically, to organize and manipulate concepts, and to monitor the ongoing effectiveness of their note-taking strategies.

    Here are some strategies to help students develop their note-taking skills.

    The Importance Of Taking Notes When You Study

    Identifying Important Information

    • Help students learn how to pick out the salient, or important, information from class lectures and textbooks.
      • Teach students how to look for and listen for verbal organizational cues embedded in text and lecture: “In summary…”, “The five reasons are…”, etc.
      • To model effective highlighting strategies, provide the student with the highlighting already started as a guide.
      • Have students talk about their strategies for deciding which information to underline or highlight and which to disregard. This type of exercise can be incorporated into any activity, e.g., math story problems, a story being read, writing a brochure, following directions in a science experiment, etc.
      • Teach students to use a color coding system as they underline or highlight. For example, they might underline main ideas in red, details in blue, etc.
      • Have students practice both picking out the main ideas or important details, and also restating them or putting them into their own words.
      • Have students write down the information they think should be remembered from a lesson (on a scratch pad or piece of paper). Then help them place the information in a form that is organized based on importance.
      • During instruction, provide students with outlines of lectures so they can follow along and fill in blanks with lesson details.
      • Discuss key words that provide specific directions for tasks in a test, e.g., circle, underline, list, compare, contrast, etc.
      • Have students practice identifying key information at each step, before continuing an activity, e.g., underlining key words in directions, etc.
    • As a pre-reading activity, have students scan each chapter in their textbook before reading the chapter. For example, have them survey the text for introductions, headings, sub-headings, bold-face/italic type, key terms lists, a summary, conclusions, reading/learning goals, and repeated material.

    Becoming an Active Listener

    • Help students learn active, critical listening by encouraging them to summarize main points, compare and contrast ideas with their prior own knowledge, and try to anticipate what is coming next. Prompt students for these activities, e.g. “Now is a good time to summarize the points thus far by jotting them down in your notebook”, “Tell me what you already know about...”, “Based on the activity we just finished, what do you think we’re going to do next‘”, etc.
    • Use practice listening and reading activities to help students develop their paraphrasing and summarizing skills.
    • Teach students to use self-monitoring techniques to be sure they are actively listening, for example, thinking of the word FACT (Focus attention, Ask yourself questions, Connect ideas, Try to picture important ideas).
    • Teach students to engage in the following post-listening strategies: (1) Review notes from a lecture as soon as possible after class, (2) Relate what you heard today to information that is already in your notes, (3) Check to see if there is anything that you don’t understand, if so get immediate clarification, (4) Draw up a summary statement from the lecture, and (5) Read the summary statement as a pre-listening tool at the beginning of the next class session.

    Organizing Information

    • Teach students how to create their own concept maps as one way to organize lectures, reading, and study material. Concept maps are an excellent way to show students how a broad topic, e.g., music, is connected to sub-topics, e.g., their own guitar lessons.
    • Encourage students to use computer applications that include word processors with spell checkers, and programs that guide outlining and graphic organizing. Programs with concept organizing templates that allow students to move back and forth between an outline form and a concept map are particularly helpful for building organizational skills.
    • Suggest strategies for students to use when constructing a concept map. One example is TRAVEL (Write and circle Topic, Read material, Ask yourself what the main idea(s) and details are, Verify main idea(s) and details and record them in circles with linking lines, Examine and repeat for rest of the material, Link all main ideas to one another) (Boyle, 1996).
    • When teaching students how to create and organize concept maps, begin with materials/content that students can use independently to be sure students can attend to the details of the strategy of making a concept map. Initially, keep the maps you use as models and student generated maps simple.
    • Have students create graphic representations of information they have heard or read, including flow charts (e.g., to show the steps required for a bill to become a law or the process of photosynthesis), tables (e.g., to compare and contrast key concepts in a chapter), and diagrams (e.g., Venn diagrams to illustrate overlapping sets of social groups).
    • Teach students to recognize the different patterns of organization found in textbooks: definition/example, compare/contrast, cause/effect, sequence (time-related, procedural, importance), listing, description. Help students find examples of each pattern in their texts and reading materials. Use content area textbooks (math, social studies, language arts, etc.) to accentuate the similarities and differences in text organization.

    Taking Notes

    • Have students practice note-taking, outlining and concept mapping techniques that are best suited for the different organizational patterns found in textbooks.
    • Introduce students to note-taking techniques that may be helpful for a variety of materials. For example, a flow chart can be used to show causal relationships. Such a chart might be useful to illustrate narrative happenings in a story, events in history, procedural sequences in science, etc.
    • As students read, have them develop a list of their own questions to answer, incorporating these questions into their notes.
    • Provide students with specific strategies to use to guide their note-taking.
      • One strategy to consider is the SQ3R Reading and Study Strategy (Survey the material by looking at title, headings, introductory paragraph, and summary paragraph-Turn headings and subheadings into Question format- Read the text, actively looking for answers to the Questions you formed- Recite important points and major concepts- Review a final time) The SQ4R version of this strategy adds an additional note-taking step: (Survey- Question- Read- Recite- wRite down key terms and a summary of the important points- Review).
      • Another example is the Five R’s Note-taking strategy (Record information on paper-Reduce by rewriting into an outline or summary form-Recite important points-Reflect, or check your notes for accuracy-Review a final time)
    • Teach alternative note-taking and outlining techniques based on student strengths and class demands. Examples may include index card use, annotation, column notes, notes from front page only, etc.
    • The Cornell system for taking notes is one technique to consider.
      • Step 1: TO PREPARE: Use a large, loose-leaf notebook. Use only one side of the paper (so that you can lay your notes out to see the direction of a lecture.) Draw a vertical line 2 1/2 inches from the left side of you paper (law ruled paper is already designed this way). This left side column is the Recall column. Later key words or phrases will be written in the Recall column. Notes will be taken to the right of this margin.
      • Step 2: DURING THE LESSON: Record notes on the right side in paragraph form. Capture general ideas, not illustrative ideas. Skip lines to show end of ideas or thoughts. Use abbreviations to save time.
      • Step 3: AFTER THE LECTURE: Read through your notes and make them more legible if necessary. Now add information to the Recall column by jotting down key words or questions that give you the idea of the paragraph. Take time to REDUCE - reread the teacher’s ideas and restate or explain them in your own words.
      • Step 4: TO STUDY: Cover up the right-hand portion of your notes and use the Recall notes to trigger the general ideas and concepts of the lecture. Overlap your notes showing only the Recall columns to do a comprehensive review.

    Teacher Techniques

    The Importance Of Taking Notes In Class

    • Pace presentations and learning activities. Incorporate pauses for quiet processing time and note-taking. Provide time for students to actively review their notes. For example, give students time to check their notes against information in the book for accuracy and content, to organize their notes in a meaningful way, and to rewrite extended notes into outline or summary form.
    • To provide students with a context for organizing what they are learning, present new information by moving from the global (or general) to the more detailed (or specific). For example, in English, before reading specific works of literature, introduce the author of the works by showing a video and/or discussing his/her life; in science, first discuss the relationship of the brain to the entire body, then explore the brain as an organ, finally, focus on specific parts of the brain.
    • Group similar concepts in your lesson. Organize your presentation to help students see patterns in what they are learning.
    • Help students see the “big picture” of the concepts they are learning. Encourage them to think about how key ideas from a lecture or textbook relate to each other, to ideas from other lectures and to themes of the class. For example, have students use textbook chapter outlines as organizing guidelines and look for relationships between items in the outline, or ask students to organize key ideas and supporting information in a diagram or visual format to give them a ‘picture’ of how concepts are related.
    • During instruction or reading, provide students with complete outlines to follow, partially completed outlines, or blank outline templates to fill in during the lesson.