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Revising Notes
Why this is important: Teaching students to go back into their notes and update them as their understanding of the content deepens provides an opportunity for review and revision. The review-and-revision process must be intentionally taught. Because forgetting begins immediately after learning, revising should take place as soon as possible after the notes are taken. Giving students specific elements to include in revision provides learners something tangible to look for as they deepen their skills through this cognitive process.
How it works: During this step, learners will dive back into their notes to identify what is important (key ideas, terms, people, etc.) and to clarify the existing information to make the notes a useful learning tool. Relying on classmates as a primary source for filling in missing information or returning to the original source for clarification, the learner will make sure notes are complete, clear, and ready to use in the applying learning phase of note-taking. Note revision is a messy process as students add, subtract, or mark information by underlining, color-coding, crossing-out, or amending. The evidence of revision serves as a visible indication of students’ thinking about their learning.
Key strategies for revising notes include:
- Identifying and marking key terms or vocabulary words
- Color-coding to indicate important people, events, places, or works
- Crossing out extraneous or unimportant information
- Adding information to fill in gaps, clarify, or elaborate
- Indicating important information and points of confusion that require clarification or further explanation
- Marking most important ideas or main points
- Representing information in visual or symbolic ways to help with recall
- Annotating notes by paraphrasing large or wordy chunks of material
The Student Resource: Note Revision Checklist can serve as a guide for learners to revise their own notes or to collaborate with a partner to revise.
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S t u d e n t R e s o u r c e
Note Revision Checklist
Completed Symbol Revision
ABC
- Number the notes for each new concept or main idea.
Key Word
- Circle vocabulary/key terms.
Main Idea
- Highlight or underline main ideas.
- Fill in gaps of missing information and/or reword/rephrase in red.
Unimportant
- Delete/cross out unimportant information by drawing a line through it with a red pen.
- Identify points of confusion to clarify by asking a partner or teacher.
- Identify information to be used on a test, essay, for a tutorial, etc.
Visual/Symbol
- Create a visual/symbol to represent important information to be remembered.
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Facilitating the Processing of Notes:
What Educators Can Do
The following is a collection of strategies and ideas to use for planning and implementing the processing phase of the focused note-taking process.
Content Re-creation: Students attempt to re-create the content of the lecture, video, or reading using the keywords they highlighted in their notes to guide them. Re-creations can be oral (as in a Pair–Share) or written (as in a quickwrite).
Guided Paraphrase: Use “Think–Say–Write” to paraphrase using guiding questions posed by the instructor. Students think for 30–60 seconds, share with a partner, receive feedback, and then add to their notes in writing. Possible topics for guiding questions include:
- How would you rewrite a definition of a term in your own words?
- What would be an example of…?
- How is _______ related to _______?
- What might be confusing about this topic to someone else?
- Why is this important or significant?
- What are some other ways to say this?
Timed Note Share: After students have divided the notes into chunks, give students one minute each to select one chunk and share their answers to the following questions with a partner or trio:
- The most important thing I learned in this chunk of my notes is…
- Something that is still a little foggy is… /Something I want to know more about is…
Educator Modeling: The instructor models how to process notes by conducting a Think-Aloud using a pre-prepared set of notes projected in front of the class. Modeling is useful for students who are learning how to process notes. Another option is to have a student volunteer model processing of notes for the class. The students can process and mark the notes with the help of the class or can show notes with evidence of processing to get class feedback. Modeling can occur at the end of a lesson, as a stand-alone lesson, or prior to beginning the next lesson to make connections between one set of notes and new material.
Revision as Homework: The processing phase of note-taking can be meaningful homework. This teaches the habit of revisiting notes after class and shows that the instructor places value on the notes and on the note-taking process. The instructor should follow up the next day with a processing strategy (30-Second Expert, comparing revision with a partner, Timed Note Share, etc.).
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Key Word Brainstorm: As a collaborative way to initiate the initial processing of notes, use the Whip-Around collaboration strategy to allow students to brainstorm in round-robin fashion and highlight key words and vocabulary in their notes. The words can be compiled to create a digital or paper community word bank to use for further writing or speaking opportunities or lessons about the topic.
Top Five: Ask students to identify and mark (highlight or circle) the top five most important words or terms in the notes. Then have students explain to a partner why they selected those words. An optional extension is to ask students to mark the next five words in importance if the notes are complicated. Add the words to a digital or paper community word bank.
30-Second Expert: To review content of notes after processing, ask students to form pairs. Partner A explains one topic he or she is an “expert” on for 30 seconds using the stem, “One topic from my notes that I have expert understanding of is…” Partner B then paraphrases what Partner A said (for 30 more seconds) with the stem, “According to (expert’s name), _________. Did I get it right?” Partners then switch roles and complete the process again.
