Hello everybody!
Today I'm going to share with you one of the most helpful things taking AP Human Geography taught me: how to take notes from a textbook! After a bit of tweaking, I've finally found the perfect method that will guarantee me success every single time. Let's jump in!
1. Read the material TWICE.
-The first thing I do is read what I'll be taking notes on...twice. I don't do anything else but focus 100% of my mind on digesting the information---no note-taking, no annotating, no nothing. I do it twice because I get easily anxious to finish and can misunderstand or miss things completely. This part takes the most time, but in the long run it's yet another way to get that information into your memory.
2. Annotate the content
-One of the greatest things I've ever done was start annotating my textbooks. Instead of making study guides, I use sticky notes and write questions related to the paragraph I'm at and stick them right there for me to study later. That way, not only do I have the answer, I also have a thorough explanation to aid me in remembering the correct answer and understanding why I got it wrong. Brilliant on my part, if I do say so myself. :)
3. Type Notes in OneNote while imputing vocabulary into Quizlet
-The most important thing for me to accomplish when taking notes from a textbook is to NOT COPY IT. My logic is "what's the point of doing notes if I'm just going to plagiarize the textbook?" It can be really easy to see a sentence and think "that entire thing is important, let me copy it verbatim." And sometimes, that is the case, and it's perfectly okay to copy a sentence or more if you ABSOLUTELY CANNOT REWORD IT into a light that not only you understand, but means the same exact thing as the original sentence. But, more often than not, you can translate the textbook lingo into...you know...English.
-To aid this paraphrasing process, my ride-or-die website is thesaurus.com. It gives you tons and tons of synonyms for words you may not understand or need to replace in order to change up the sentence. You can pick one that you understand and will remember the meaning of, all while paraphrasing your sentence!
It's so helpful for when you're taking notes and the textbook throws a term at you you've never heard. DO NOT put terms in your notes that you do not know (aside from vocab, of course.) Use a synonym that you will remember. This will make retaining and remembering the information much easier.
-To veer away from copying word for word, I make an effort to type my notes in sentence fragments. Say the sentence is "An artist who similarly understood the power of nature but also depicted the forces of the new industrialism that was challenging them was Joseph Mallord William Turner."
4. Highlight the OneNote notes
6. Highlight the notes I transferred
That's all I've got you guys! Until next time!
Today I'm going to share with you one of the most helpful things taking AP Human Geography taught me: how to take notes from a textbook! After a bit of tweaking, I've finally found the perfect method that will guarantee me success every single time. Let's jump in!
1. Read the material TWICE.
-The first thing I do is read what I'll be taking notes on...twice. I don't do anything else but focus 100% of my mind on digesting the information---no note-taking, no annotating, no nothing. I do it twice because I get easily anxious to finish and can misunderstand or miss things completely. This part takes the most time, but in the long run it's yet another way to get that information into your memory.
-I usually read silently, but if you're in a noisy environment or prefer reading with music, I'd suggest either Rainy Mood, Coffitivity, this Spotify station, or a classical music station on Pandora, Spotify, iTunes Radio, etc.
2. Annotate the content
-One of the greatest things I've ever done was start annotating my textbooks. Instead of making study guides, I use sticky notes and write questions related to the paragraph I'm at and stick them right there for me to study later. That way, not only do I have the answer, I also have a thorough explanation to aid me in remembering the correct answer and understanding why I got it wrong. Brilliant on my part, if I do say so myself. :)
3. Type Notes in OneNote while imputing vocabulary into Quizlet
-The most important thing for me to accomplish when taking notes from a textbook is to NOT COPY IT. My logic is "what's the point of doing notes if I'm just going to plagiarize the textbook?" It can be really easy to see a sentence and think "that entire thing is important, let me copy it verbatim." And sometimes, that is the case, and it's perfectly okay to copy a sentence or more if you ABSOLUTELY CANNOT REWORD IT into a light that not only you understand, but means the same exact thing as the original sentence. But, more often than not, you can translate the textbook lingo into...you know...English.
-To aid this paraphrasing process, my ride-or-die website is thesaurus.com. It gives you tons and tons of synonyms for words you may not understand or need to replace in order to change up the sentence. You can pick one that you understand and will remember the meaning of, all while paraphrasing your sentence!
It's so helpful for when you're taking notes and the textbook throws a term at you you've never heard. DO NOT put terms in your notes that you do not know (aside from vocab, of course.) Use a synonym that you will remember. This will make retaining and remembering the information much easier.
-To veer away from copying word for word, I make an effort to type my notes in sentence fragments. Say the sentence is "An artist who similarly understood the power of nature but also depicted the forces of the new industrialism that was challenging them was Joseph Mallord William Turner."
- Decode the sentence and pluck out the important information.
- An artist who similarly understood the power of nature but also depicted the forces of the new industrialism that was challenging them was Joseph Mallord William Turner
- Thesaurus.com any unnecessarily long/hard words or words you don't understand
- Depicted --> Showed (Portrayed)
- The forces ---> The power
- Challenging them --> Questioned/posed a threat to them
- Combine into a sentence fragment that becomes a bullet point for your notes!
- Turner, Joseph Mallord William: Showed both nature and new industrialism's power (which posed a threat to nature's) in his art.
-Microsoft OneNote is an application in which you can create virtual notebooks and type in anything you want! I like it a lot better than Microsoft Word or Google Docs, because all of my notes for a certain class are right there, in order and together. My favorite thing about it is its "Dock to Desktop" feature under the View tab. I use this to type in my notes while simultaneously imputing any vocabulary words into Quizlet.
After the notes are complete, I go in and color code/highlight them. Depending on the class, the color scheme changes, but it's the same concept no matter the subject. This is another opportunity for me to encode the information (by reading it) as well as mentally separating the information with the colors.
5. Transfer the OneNote notes to my notebook
My favorite part: actually hand writing the notes! Now that I know exactly what the notes are going to look like, I can go in and write them physically in my notebook. This aids studying because writing information with your hands encodes it better, and I'm having to read the information YET AGAIN.
On the left are my lecture notes, and on the right are my textbook notes. :)
6. Highlight the notes I transferred
After I'm done transferring the notes, I highlight them exactly how I did on the computer. In this step, I'm once again mentally separating the information with colors as well as reading it.
7.Study annotations and Quizlet
This is the real study part! I go through the annotations I made in my book and answer the questions I wrote OUT LOUD. I act like I'm talking to someone and trying to explain them the material. I'm content with talking to myself, but if you aren't, try and find someone you can actually teach!
This is the real study part! I go through the annotations I made in my book and answer the questions I wrote OUT LOUD. I act like I'm talking to someone and trying to explain them the material. I'm content with talking to myself, but if you aren't, try and find someone you can actually teach!
In addition, I also study the words I inputted into Quizlet, back first to recognize the information, then front to recall it. I switch between the sides of the cards to have increase memorization of the words by doing both methods.
That's all I've got you guys! Until next time!
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