High school students hate to take notes. Well, some high school students hate to take notes. Generally the top and the bottom of the spectrum of students hate notes. The former hates them because they are boring and the latter hates them because you have to write things and pay attention. The middle students generally like notes because they are a mindless and an easy way to get “points”. Since students have either negative or ineffectual feelings--or both--on “notes”, I announce to every class at the beginning of the year:

“We will not be taking notes in this class.”

Looks range from glee to quizzical to sceptical.

“Instead, we are simply going to write down things we want to remember. We will call them ‘Remember Writes’.”

I go through this charade every year in order to re-brand my lecture notes. At some point along the way, students have been trained that notes mean you transcribe symbols from the projector screen onto your notebook. Then the adult in the room gives you these things called “points”. When enough “points” are accumulated, your parents are happy and you get to go to “college”.

I want my students to learn from my lectures (of which I am desperately trying to cut way back on in attempt to be a “guide” rather than a “sage”).  Notes--if done properly--help us do this in two ways. First, they are a log of the information we gained which can be studied later for memorization. Secondly, like annotating an article, notes help us stay engaged with the material resulting in improved learning; simply the act of writing something down help us to remember and think critically about it.

Retraining the students can be an arduous process though. When those words pop-up on the screen they scramble to write them all down, regardless of actually listening or understanding them at all.

I solve this by printing the notes for them. Usually six slides per page, never more than 12 slides. When printed like this, the sheets have plenty of room between slides to make notes. Since they have the slides right in front of them, it would be ridiculous to write down what’s on the slides. They can circle, underline, redefine, etc. They can read ahead or look back on previous slides. Plus, they now have time to listen to my brilliant--yet witty--explanations, anecdotes, and analogies. The students only write down what they want to. They gain ownership of the notes.

One last tidbit. I never grade the notes for points. I tell them that they will be graded on their notes on test day...