Taking down notes is an essential learning skill that a homeschool student must learn. Especially if they plan to go on to regular college. It is also a simple skill to learn. Given here are some tips that you can use to teach your homeschool student to take good notes down.
Create Your Own Shorthand Code
While you do not need to learn official shorthand, it helps if you have your own short cut codes while taking notes. There is usually no time to write complete sentences, so writing in symbols and key concepts helps keep up with the speaker. The homeschool student should be encouraged to develop a series of abbreviations that he can memorize and use with ease while note taking. The more familiar the homeschool student is with the code the faster the note taking will go.
Evaluate, Organize and Summarize
The homeschool student needs to hear what is being said, while simultaneously evaluating which points are important, organizing them into headlines, and then summarizing whatever has been said per headline in a couple of statements. It will help to have more occasions to practice the skill. Encourage the homeschool students to take notes of a sermon in church, a new broadcast on television or even a TED ED video.
Review and Revise On the Go
As soon as the speaker has finished speaking, go over he notes that have been taken down. This will help to add in details that you may have missed, or add more explanations that you may want to, and even make corrections and clarifications that you wish to write in. The longer you wait to revise, the less you will remember of what the speaker had spoken. That’s why its important to re-read the notes you have taken right away.
Formal Note Taking Methods
Two formal note taking methods are the Column method and the Mind Map method. In the Column method the page is divided into three columns, where the first column is used for main ideas and the remaining two for filling in details and examples. In the Mind Map method the topic or central idea is placed at the middle of the page, then lines are branched out for subsequent sub ideas that are mentioned. Related ideas get lines from the same branch, new ideas get placed in a fresh branch.
