Notes and Performance 1

Notes and Performance

Notes and Performance: Teaching Note-Taking Styles in regards with Novels

Joseph Allen
Manhattan College EDUC 360

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Abstract
Note taking is one of the most important skills that students need to learn in order to succeed. In
my field experience at Archbishop Stepinac High School, working with a freshman for a week, I
have observed his note-taking ability and decided to try several strategies of note-taking with
him, based on the novel that his class was currently reading. Since he was reading the novel on
his computer, the original strategies had to change as to incorporate the computer, highlighting
the passages and writing the notes and page number in his notebook.

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Notes and Performance: Teaching Note-Taking Styles in regards with Novels
Note taking may be the most important skill students can have in their school career, if
not the most useful. Note taking allows a student to process information in a way that it can be
visited again at a later date in order for the student to study for a test, or use the information
given in class to help with their homework and assignments. Unfortunately note-taking, at least
efficient note taking, is a difficult skill that most students struggle to master, as they divide their
attention between what the teachers are saying and what they, the students, are writing down.
The result is that the student is left lost in a sea of knowledge, and only a bare understanding of
how to make sense of it. With this situation, during my field experience at Archbishop Stepinac
High School I have decided to look into the situation of note taking, focusing specifically on
freshmen English classes as they are the obvious youngest of the high school and thus have
not set a particular school habit with their notes yet, and because English is a concentration I
am well informed in, and is one of the subjects in which note taking is key to understanding.
The ninth grade English class was taught by a teacher named Mr. Perillo. During my
field observation and experience, the class was doing a unit on novels, specifically the young
adult novel The Lord of the Flies by William Golding. The student, for the case of privacy he
shall be referred to as so, sat in the back of Mr. Perillos class, and while the other students
were participating, answering questions about the book and characters, he was silent, staring at
his notebook and computer screen, where he had a pdf file of the book. During my first day
there, I have observed the student was mostly silent in the class, and is barely passing the
class, his scores from past quizzes in the range of low seventies, high sixties. Though some
were argue that the student is passing the class, having around a C average, after looking into
his notebook I see that there is room for improvement. In his notebook were sparse phrases and
words that seemed to be notes from his teachers lectures, yet without any context they all seem
random and out of place with each other. I knew in my short amount of time that I would not be

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able to fully fix his problem, but I can at least give him a basis to help him with his lack of note
taking skills. Since the class is focusing on a unit on reading a novel, I decided to focus on
teaching the student strategies on taking notes from a novel. In order to know more about note
taking I have turned to research and have found a couple of articles that will help me
understand more about note taking and in turn, help formulate a plan for my student. These
articles are Effects of Note-taking and extended writing on expository text comprehension: who
benefits and Note-taking with Computers: Exploring Alternative strategies for Improved
Recall. Both articles helped me reinforce the importance of note taking in class, of any subject,
and help change my original plan to help the student and instead give out several strategies that
would help him. With the article and situation with the student in mind, we come to the question
which is: How can I promote note taking for the student while giving him the basics?
The Studies
The first study, Effects of Note taking and extended writing on expository text
comprehension: who benefits focused on a fact that a large number of kids arent good
readers with only 36% of 12th graders, 43% of 8th graders and 34% of 4th graders scoring at the
basic level of literacy. The article explains that students arent approaching the expository text
with a plan of action so in order to increase the students scores the researchers had look at
writing as a possible solution. Their study has found that both note taking and extended writing
had better results than just studying or reading the text, showing note takings importance and
effectiveness compared to other strategies, such as only reading the text or story, and extended
writing, which while it provided even better results it takes up more time for students to do thus it
is not as efficient as note taking. Also, extended writing requires questions based on the text
while note taking requires no questions, and can be done both while the student is reading,
either at home or free time during class, and while the teacher is giving his or her lecture, which
Mr. Perillo tended to do in my case.

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The case study, nevertheless, helps proves the importance of note taking, and without it
and the basics I planned to teach the student in my limited time with him, he would be part of
the forty-three percent who is only scoring at the basic literacy level. With his current note taking
skills at risk he had the possibility to slip below the forty three percent as his grades is only in
the low seventies, and his notebook being filled with just phrases.
The second case study I looked at was Note taking with Computers: Exploring
Alternatives strategies for Improved Recall. In it, the researchers agreed that taking notes is
beneficial, just as the previous article proved, but they are concern with which method of note
taking is more efficient: writing notes down by hand or typing them down on a computer. In the
study, researchers hypothesized that with the students working memory, the ability to
temporarily hold and manipulate a limited amount of information, taking notes with a computer
would be better than handwriting notes, and would lead to better learning. After using eighty
students they have found their hypothesis to be true and that the students who used the
computer took more notes than those who handwrote notes, and performed better in short
answers and free recall tests. Although a limitation in the study is that the students focused on
quantity over quality, as did the study for the notes missed the main focus of the lecture,
nevertheless the study had help develop my plan moving forward as students more and more
are turning to computers for their note taking.
The Strategies
Based on what I have learned, I have revised my original plan, as well as produce a
couple of other plans and strategies the student can use for different classes and types of text.
My original strategy, that I have told him about the second day of observation, is that to help his
note taking by using several reading with a pencil ideas, where the student would read the text
with a pencil and physically underline what he believes to be important, and either in the margin

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or his notebook jot down a few words about the underlined portion and why it is important. This
would be great for when the student reads from his textbook, which he told me he has a
physical copy of, not only for his English class, but other classes that requires textbooks.
Unfortunately, this current plan would not work with his current unit of Lord of the Flies as
instead of having a physical copy of the book he, as with all the other freshmen in his class, has
the book as a pdf file that they access on their laptops, iPad, or whatever electronic device they
have. With this roadblock, I changed my strategy and focused on taking notes from the physical
to the electronical.
With taking notes based on a pdf, or any online article, I focused on a strategy that still
requires use of a notebook, as the students class requires a five subject notebook, but can
make finding passages easier for the student and uses the same idea as the reading with a
pencil strategies. The students laptop, a Mac, had the ability to highlight phrases straight on
the pdf automatically after downloading it, so we worked with that to help with his note taking.
First, in the library during his lunch period we went over the first chapter that he had to
read for the day, telling him before anything else to open to a new page and write Chapter 3
and the page number that it started on the file. Next I asked him what happened in the chapter,
and when he told me I asked him to find the page the even happened and highlighted it using a
program that the Mac has. Next, in the notebook I had him write down the page number and a
sentence or two about the highlighted section, who was in it, what happened, and what was the
results. We continued this for the rest of the chapter and after a break we moved onto the
second chapter that he was supposed to read and I gave him the alternative strategy that
requires a bit more writing, but no highlighting.
The second strategy, which develops similarly to the first strategy and the reading with a
pencil strategies with the only exception of instead of highlighting, or underlining the student

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wrote down the page number, and paragraph that was writing notes about, or if it is small
enough, the quote itself. I explained that these are good for cases when you either cannot write
in the textbooks for whatever reason, or if you cannot highlight in the pdf file. We used this
strategy for the second chapter and at the end I asked him his thoughts and which one he liked
better. The student chose the first strategy with highlighting the phrases, as it was less
annoying than counting the paragraph number or writing down the quote in his notebook, and
that he would try to remember to use the strategy as best he can. During class when the
teacher asked questions, while my student did not raise his hand to answer every question, he
did seem more attentive, answering one question that day.
Results
At the end of my time at Stepinac, I checked the students notebook one last time, and
while it seems that he is using the highlighting strategy that I showed him, he still has a
moderate ways to go until it becomes second nature to him. Looking back, I believe that while I
did not radically change the students behaviors or drastically improve his grades, I gave him the
base and tools that he can use to improve both his grades and note taking skills. When I left, I
saw improvement from the short phrases that he had before. Instead, while there were still
phrases, they were either next to a page number or under a chapter giving the notes a context
that will make them useable and helpful for the student when he will get either a quiz or test on
Lord of the Flies. His notes taking improvement, while not proving that note taking is essential to
a good education and grades, is an example of it as the individual showed slight improvement
during the week that I was at Stepinac.
Note taking skills is a very important, and useful, skill that students need in their career
as students and it is difficult to learn. The first study proves this by showing the advantages and
successes that the group of students that took notes over the students who have just read the

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text. The second study furthers that belief, but has extended it to students who have taken notes
using a computer over handwriting the notes. In my experience in the field, the individual that I
have worked with in the short week that we worked together proves the importance and
difficulties note taking has. He needed to be taught how to take notes, and even after he had to
remind himself to use the strategies that I have taught him, until eventually it will become
second nature to him. If I would ever do this study again, I would first increase the study group
as this experience and report is based on a single student.

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References
Bui, Dung C.; Myerson, Joel; Hale, Sandra (2013) Note-taking with Computers: Exploring
Alternative Strategies for Improved Recall Journal of Educational Psychology 105.2 299309.Retrieved from
http://search.proquest.com.www.library.manhattan.edu/eric/docview/1413414651/69A273B51A5
9470APQ/1?accountid=12258
Herbert, Michael; Graham, Steve; Rigby-Wills, Hope; Ganson, Katie (2014) Effects of NoteTaking and Extended Writing on Expository Text Comprehension: Who Benefits? Learning
Disabilities: A Contemporary Journal 12.1. 43-68. Retrieved from
http://search.proquest.com.www.library.manhattan.edu/eric/docview/1651864732/B2018CA179
B343E1PQ/1?accountid=12258