The core of a good study process is effective annotating and note taking. In the Upper School's Glenn Teaching & Learning Center, we teach very specific skills in these two areas that have been proven successful over time. If students use this system, their study process will be more effective and they will do better on tests. This annotating and note-taking technique promotes efficient learning because of how the brain processes and remembers new information.
For the purposes of this blog, refer to the links at the top right that show annotating and note taking for history and English (science works the same way, too).
I might as well get the controversial point out of the way first; highlighting reading is not the best way to annotate. When you look at a highlighted typed page, nothing stands out, and most of the time students highlight too much on the page anyway. It is just a page with color on it.
Compare this to a page that has been annotated with a colored pen (look at the history example). See the difference? When you look at the page, you can see the reader has engaged in making relationships in the reading. Only the most important main points are underlined, and these are the bullet points in the notes. Particularly with history, people, places, things, and events are the majority of matching and multiple-choice questions; circling them on the page makes them pop out. Drawing an outline around a group of information “pops,” too. This system allows finding information on a page easily if it is necessary go back and look up information.
Because reading a textbook usually involves learning new information, understanding how the brain processes and remembers information is well worth knowing. First, no one can “read over the chapter” and really absorb it, much less remember it. One must mentally interact with the information to help process and organize it, one paragraph at a time. For beginners, read the whole paragraph before annotating and think about what is the topic sentence or main idea. Then, what are the supporting details to the topic? This becomes an easier process with practice. Second, take notes in a way so information is easy to remember.
People remember information in chunks and bits that are associated to a topic. We do this all the time. For example, you want to call your mother to tell her about a movie. You remember the phone number in groups of 3-3-4 because it is much easier than 10 numbers all at once. You would recall the movie in chunks: the beginning was… the exciting part was... my favorite part was... This is chunking information by topic to remember the details. Remembering information for a test is no different; it just takes more effort and an effective technique.
If a student has a solid page of notes with no grouping, it just looks like a bunch of words on a page. This is very difficult to remember! However, if the information is grouped by topic, people can remember a lot of information. Look at the example with the notes taken from the annotated history page. The topic is in the left margin; the bullets are listed to the right. Notice the bullets are not complete sentences. Our brains don’t remember sentences, just chunks, and then we make sentences from the chunks later. The topic and bullets makes one larger chunk together; for memory purposes, the topic reminds the person of the bullets. Now, it is very important to skip a line between the “topic and bullets chunk” to keep it separated mentally. Finally, if you want to use that highlighter, just highlighting the topics on the textbook page or notes helps memory by making it stand out. Just remember a little color is good; too much runs everything together.
When we have to remember a lot of detail, especially if it is complex, then we must write the information down in a way that helps us make sense of it and enables our memory. To rehearse information, or pretest, one looks at each topic and thinks of how much they can recall without looking. This is called, studying! I tell my students, “You are always working towards exams.” In other words, annotating and note taking as I have described, will make understanding, remembering and rehearsing information much easier. This, with some practice, will produce higher test grades.
