High School Survival Kit Project Specifications
Note Taking Instructional Plan

Instructional Plan for the Note-Taking Component

• Time: One, possibly two sessions to read and complete the exercise in the component. Follow-up consultations with a teacher, advisor or a peer to monitor progress and pinpoint problems.

• Materials: Student's class notes; paper and pen 

• About the Links: The note-taking component links the student to four sites which offer information about the reasons and methods for taking notes. The first link accesses material written especially for high school students. It is relatively brief, to the point, and simply written. Even a student with low reading skills should have no problems with comprehension. 

The other three links are to different pages at a study skills site published by St. John's University. Written at the ninth grade level, the information at this site is more detailed and situation-specific. The link titled Lecture Note-Taking provides a valuable list of words and phrases which for savvy students are the flags or signals of important, and therefore noteworthy, information. For this list alone, any student would benefit from a visit to this site. 

• The Plan: The focus of this component is to have students evaluate their current skills at note-taking and then on the basis of that evaluation, work to improve those skills.
• Step one: Students access the sites to learn (or review) why and how to take notes. Whether your students access one or all of these sites, they will be introduced to the fundamentals of note-taking. 

Hint: The evaluation and practice exercises which follow require students to use notes they have taken in one of their classes. If your students are eighth graders, they may not have class notes to use for self-evaluation. If that's the case, ask your students to take notes while they read the online information about note-taking. They will be able to use these notes for the evaluation exercise that follows.
 

• Step two: (Evaluation) Students will need their own class notes for this part. Go to the Practice Exercise page in the component. Students use their own class notes for a self-evaluation of their current note-taking skill. To assist this evaluation, criteria is provided on that page. You may want the students to record their evaluation on a separate sheet of paper. Students should note what they did well and in what ways they need to improve. 

The use of this evaluation is your call. The hard copy might serve as a reference for the students as well as a record of their work in this component. Students who are doing this component could be grouped to discuss and compare the evaluations.
 

• Step Three: (Practice) This exercise requires that two students who share the same class become partners to practice note-taking and provide feedback for one another. Each student is responsible for taking his/her own notes. The students will critique and compare their notes, paying attention to the criteria provided and especially to content.