Take Better Notes

let going to talk about how to take better notes because I remember when I was a student I was not a very good test taker I'm sorry I was not a very good note taker my notes would be completely messed up and even though a lot of times I could listen to my teacher I understood what was going on in class I remember coming home and looking over my notes be like oh I don't have to worry about my homework I'll do it late at night before I go to bed and I'd go back and get my homework try to go and do it look at my notes and being like what did I write down I thought understood what winning class but then when I want to try to do the work I try to understand my notes it didn't make any sense and unfortunately there was not a lot of advice on like how to take notes like basically the best advice up to that point was like just write down what the teacher was writing on the board right and that's what most teachers or like anybody else will say to me so I was kind of a lo I was kind of lost as a student and I improved on my notak abilities by learning some things that kind of work for me and that's and those are some things that I want to share with you guys in this video now some other things though that I think the really changes once I became a teacher and when I became a teacher I kind of fell into the way that I was taught right and I think that a lot of teachers do that as well even though we have training and we go through all these education courses of you know how to teach in general how to be a better teacher in teach of mathematics you a lot of times just kind of fall back on what you're used to and I did kind of go through a growth of like how did I want my students to absorb the information in class and even though I started off with this very traditional approach of like writing down a lot of stuff on the board and having my students copy it I quickly kind of remembered myself as a student and realized that method did not work for me and so why am I just repeating that for my own students and even though there are some students that you know they just might prefer that they don't want to talk they don't want to engage they don't want to really do it they just want to show up the class get the notes and get out of and get out of there those students a lot of times would be vocal against doing any other kind of note-taking you know kind of tips or what I would advise for them but what I found was like that's not the best use of our time inside the classroom like I want to be doing some math I want to be helping you answering questions and investigating engaging and practicing I don't want to be spending our time in class of you just recopying stuff that I write down on the board so I had to change my Approach of teaching and also had to change my Approach for how I wanted my students to prepare for the classroom so what we're going to talk about in this video is four ways that you can improve your note-taking ability and it's mostly going to be geed towards math but it really I I bet a lot of these can be applied for any class that you are taking and the first thing comes down to I think something that is universal about everything is just coming in prepared for the class I know a lot of times we come into class we're like all right the class I'm going to learn so I'm just gonna sit down and see what's going to see what's going to happen for the day and then you know there's very low lift that you can just show up and start writing down notes it's easy you don't have to think about it and a lot of times it just kind of helps you get through the day but if you want to become somebody that's really really good at taking notes I think one of the most important things is you can do is be prepared go back and review what you had previously done in the class don't just just show up and just like all right time to learn right go back look back through your notes um go back and look ahead look at the book that you're having see try to go ahead and Vis or see what your um what the current topic and what the uh Professor or what you are going to be looking at like a lot of times you're going to have a syllabus so you know what content you are going to be doing a lot of the stuff you might already know offand or it's going to connect to stuff that you previously did so go ahead and review over that content it doesn't take a lot of time this can be something that can be anywhere from like five to 10 to 15 minutes of just a little bit of prep work can really really help you go ahead and take um go ahead and not only take better notes but also absorb the information so as you are inside class right you kind of know what to expect what's happening you also kind of have a little bit of context of what your teacher is teaching inside the classroom and guess what you're going to be able to add that context or those connections down in your notes right um you just don't want to be C you know copying down things because if you forget that context that's what a lot of times is going to um when you kind of forget that you know that context and stuff like that that's a lot of times is what you forget you write down the content but it doesn't really make sense you don't really know how it relates to anything that you were doing so when you have a little bit of PR work take or when you have some time to do some prep work take advantage of that now the next thing that I I think is really important that I think is very difficult I think for a lot of sometimes um students not to have but one thing that I had to do is I remember I had a student I had a lot of students with like um that had like IEPs and I always they one of the things that they would require on their IEP was to have like pre-filled notes were like notes already prepared and a lot of times my early years a teacher in I would just I just kind of like winged it like I knew what I was going to teach I had my problems and I would just go up there and teach and that was good but then once it happened was when students had an IP or students were like Hey we're going on vacation for two weeks can you send us over the notes I was like crap I don't have all of this prepared and so that's when I started coming up with like my pre-calculus course and just like you know what let's just create all these notes and let's have them available for the students and I realized ladies and gentlemen that not all teachers are going to have their notes already prepared um for you but I really do think if you can even if that may be the case you can kind of go back to you know section one and kind of like creating an outline maybe even having some of the notes If You Can Have Anything downloaded or pre-filled or anything else that you don't have to write vigorously of what's going down in um go what's going down in the class I think what's um what can be really important you know sometimes about that is like even teaming up with somebody else inside your class like inside your class that can maybe focus on you know one part of the notes and then you can focus on another part of the notes which I'm going to get to next and so therefore you kind of have like the core content that hopefully should be always provided ahead of time that you can download and re you know already have with there and therefore then you can focus on some of like the in um the Ines of like what the teacher is saying and trying to go ahead and like adding in that context because I think it's really important that we fall into this trap of whatever the teacher is writing down the board we want to be able to write down but I think the most important thing is when the teacher is writing things down the board you want to be listening you don't want to be spending your time always having to be writing things down so if there's anything that you can have to already have down in your notes so therefore when the teacher is doing their teaching they are writing stuff on the board or like writing a definition like you already have it written down therefore you can be present in the moment because I found a lot of times when I was a student I would drift off I would just you know I would I would Daydream and it things would get boring especially in a math class and so I think it's really really important to be present and one of those best ways to be present is to have not only be prepared with you know reviewing the previous notes and what's coming up but to also have some things already prilled so if you have those kind of like blank notes that you can kind of work with I think that's really really important to being able to take better notes so those are going to be the first two things when you are getting into um like basically just going through notes in your class not to focus on what is writing everything down on as the teacher is saying it but try to focus in on like those little things those little important contexts because that's the thing when you go home at night and you're trying to remember what you wrote down or why that formula or that theorem is helpful here those are the going to be the things that uh you're going to want to write down your notes so that it can click for you and therefore you can better understand things now the next thing that I think is really really important that I found out when I was in college that I needed to do and this was kind of one of those things that I didn't understand it when when I was in high school and I didn't do it because obviously I was always in sports and I was so busy busy so I was always doing all these other things but once I got into college this was like one of those tips that I think is extremely important that I was able to do right after class ended I would always go ahead and do my homework and I'd always go back and review my notes because again you're in the moment right it's just kind of like you know when you watch like a a motivational movie or something like that like what what how do you feel right after that you feel motivated right and then you can think like a week or you're like all right I'm going to go ahead and do this and I'm going to do that and if you don't take action immediately on what on those thoughts and those feelings a week or two weeks months a year goes by and you're like oh crap oh yeah I remember that yeah I was goingon to go and do that and I never did it right so you got to take action and so I think it's really really important not only to do your homework yes of course but we're talking about notes here and so what I would highly recommend is a lot of times when you go through a math class your brain can just be like a mush even though even if you do everything that I said in step one and step number two your brain can just be like you feel feel overwhelmed you're like I am just burnt out from that class I just absorbed all of this information and you're like I need to like relax I need to like you know exhale right step away and go and do that get out of the class but hopefully you're don't have to go exactly to another class or maybe you can do it after school or you know go to a tutor lab or whatever may be the case but right after that go back and review those notes because I guarantee you there's going to be some things that you're like yeah that makes sense let me go ahead and maybe write in some extra things this of what I remember the teacher saying that I didn't have time to write that down um or maybe even looking back on those notes you can add in some questions like hey this isn't making sense right now let me go ahead and maybe like write down those questions like why they're not making sense to you at that like in there so therefore you have an idea when you know it's time for you to do your homework or you know later on that night you can go back and kind of explore those things or you can go you know get some help you know from a tutor or a parent or you know even to your professor that I think it's really important to don't just like take your notes get down in class shove it in your notebook and then don't look at it for four or five hours later we don't want to do that all right so make sure you're trying to take action imately review those notes add to those notes as quickly as you can take a little break but try to go back because I guarantee you can add some things to those notes to make you remember and understand what it is just happen in class because class can sometimes be overwhelming as I mentioned and the last thing that you don't I don't think it's as important to do immediately but I think it is really important for those of you that are coming up with exams you know coming up and you're coming into studying or you want to do your homework or you're getting ready for your test is to rewrite your notes I love one thing I talk about was creating the cheat cheets and that is taking all of your notes and condensing them down to one sheet of paper now that is a great and many students love it but that might not be something you want to do you might be like ah you know I just don't I like that or you know an idea and that's fine but I do think if you can go back through your notes um you know at least once or twice and when you're kind of reviewing them and and looking them over start to maybe try to think about them as like if you were to and and the mindset that I would tell my students is you know every year sometimes I remember we had like a I was in high school and we were like done with like our junior or something and we had like a bonfire at the end of the year and I remember some kid people were like taking their notebooks and like throwing them in the fire and it was all this fun like yeah school's over like we're done like Summer's here and like you know all this notes and all this knowledge was just thrown in the fire like dang you school like we're we're done with you and which is cool which is funny right at the time but then I kind of thought about it I was like you know in this digital age and obviously content is much more prevalent now in the internet but I was like go back and like go through your notes like you're gonna sell them and maybe you can like I know there's online um websites nothing's coming to my mind at the moment but I know there like where you can sell your your notes right and immediately if I looked at my notes that I took during class they would not be something that I could charge a good pretty penny for however I know a lot of people that put put in a lot of time into organizing their notes and making them really really good notes that would benefit other students and so I kind of go through this mindset of like when you take your notes that's fine that's for you right but if you can rewrite your notes if you can resmar your notes maybe for a t- sheet I think that's great or if you don't want to condense them all that way but you just want to be able to rewrite them and present them as something that you would particularly like sell even if you're not going to sell them just going through the process of rewriting condensing and summarizing your notes making them much more presentable takes your brain going back through that motion again and is going to make things better for you to understand your notes because how many times have we gone back looked at our notes and been like oh yeah that theorem or the formula it was somewhere around here and you're flipping through pages you know trying to find it right and and that's fine like in the In the Heat of the Moment when you're trying to take as much knowledge as possible like that's going to happen right there's no you know there's no better there's no like trick that I can obviously give you just like immediately you're G to take better notes but I truly believe if you are prepared for note taking if you have that mindset if you've reviewed everything if you have the immediate content already written down or maybe if you split your notes with somebody else and they take that content and you can write them down and then you guys can buy your notes if you summarize your notes immediately and then go ahead and um and then go ahead and condense them and review them right afterwards that can make you a better notet Taker and so I hope this advice you guys can use to become better at note taking and if you have any other tips that you have used or that you have seen other people have success with let me know down in the chat down below because I'm interested to hear what you guys came up with but if you have any other questions then feel free to post them into the chat and I'll be happy to answer your questions s