Note taking

[Little Green Leaves]

My fourth grader is learning to take notes this year. Up until this year we took a more Charlotte Mason approach (reading and then narration) so this is new to him and I am introducing this gently. I'd love to know how others teach this!

So far, I've been having him take notes on his history readings -- I read aloud while he takes notes. We're going slowly and stopping regularly to talk about which things are important enough to make note of, how to organize notes, etc etc.

Separately, I'm having him read a biography of Lafayette (he is learning about the French revolution and picked a figure to study further). He's going to write a short essay about Lafayette after reading the biography. He's really enjoying the book and is basically gulping it down whole. I haven't made him take notes while he reads. My plan is that once he's finished the book, we'll talk it over together and decide what he'll write his essay about. Then I'll help him make a simple outline and at that point, he'll probably have to go back through the book to find details for his report.

I hesitated over whether to require him to take notes WHILE reading the book, because I do remember having to do that for my reports in elementary school. But then again, I had to take notes because I was getting my information from the encyclopedias in the school library, not from a book in my own home. What do you guys do? In general, how do you approach note taking for this age? 

Edited October 13, 2020 by Little Green Leaves

[Lori D.]

Sounds like a great decision! This is a very young age to start note taking, so just me, but I would do so just in small bites and with a very specific purpose, such as learning "how to" or preparing to write about about the book -- just like you did with the Lafayette book. Nice work!

Also, I would suggest doing it with only one specified book at a time, and only do it with 2-3 books total over the course of the school year. Just like with doing too much literary analysis with too many books, there is a real danger of overdoing note taking and killing the love of books, or "turning reading into schoolwork" 😵.

However, it sounds like the way you did it worked great with the Lafayette book, because you laid it out in advance that the note taking and slower pace reading was the scheduled plan. 😉 Keep up the great work! 

re: "What do you guys do? In general, how do you approach note taking for this age?"
We did not do formal note taking from lectures until high school. And note taking from books was not a form of study that clicked well with either DS, or helped either of them to retain info (they have different learning styles). DS#1 was a late bloomer writer, and DS#2 was a very delayed struggling writer, so we were not able to do the kind of writing project you're doing with your DS until the middle school years, so note taking for a longer writing project didn't happen until many years later than 4th grade. Just our experience! 😄

Edited October 13, 2020 by Lori D.

[Little Green Leaves]

1 hour ago, Lori D. said:

Sounds like a great decision! This is a very young age to start note taking, so just me, but I would do so just in small bites and with a very specific purpose, such as learning "how to" or preparing to write about about the book -- just like you did with the Lafayette book. Nice work!

Also, I would suggest doing it with only one specified book at a time, and only do it with 2-3 books total over the course of the school year. Just like with doing too much literary analysis with too many books, there is a real danger of overdoing note taking and killing the love of books, or "turning reading into schoolwork" 😵.

However, it sounds like the way you did it worked great with the Lafayette book, because you laid it out in advance that the note taking and slower pace reading was the scheduled plan. 😉 Keep up the great work! 

re: "What do you guys do? In general, how do you approach note taking for this age?"
We did not do formal note taking from lectures until high school. And note taking from books was not a form of study that clicked well with either DS, or helped either of them to retain info (they have different learning styles). DS#1 was a late bloomer writer, and DS#2 was a very delayed struggling writer, so we were not able to do the kind of writing project you're doing with your DS until the middle school years, so note taking for a longer writing project didn't happen until many years later than 4th grade. Just our experience! 😄

Thank you! It is always so helpful to hear what others have done. I really appreciate it. Also the reminder not to go overboard with a new skill. 

[Moonhawk]

So for us, our 6th and 4th grader are being introduced to notes this year. I'm doing a variation on Cornell and outlining, where I have them read a chapter (or section, if the chapter is long), then have them outline it on one side of a divided page, not necessarily by paragraph but ask if there is anything "worth noting" from a paragraph and then moving on to the next. They need a lot of help with the indentation to see the flow still, but my outline is even a variation so I'm not being too picky ('m not going much into the I. A. 1. a. etc format, more big topics and bullets. I'll teach them better outlining after they can parse out the important info reliably I think, maybe next year.)

Then after they have their section of notes from the main book, I ask if they have any connections they can make ("Does this remind you of another time in history? How do we use this type of machine today?" etc) and write it on the other side of the page. Then if they have another book on the same topic, I have them read some and write down corresponding facts on the page close to where the "original" was talked about.

This is a slow process, lol. I'm only doing it for history, and the book they are outlining is SOTW4, so it isn't very difficult to parse, but I am having them read it on their own, do an initial version of the outline on their own (now, after the first couple chapters), then help them with the indenting/flow. 

Since I'm encouraging outlining I do have them read it first, then go back to outline it as a separate step, not at the same time. They tried to break the rules a couple times but it was obvious they didn't know what was coming up next in their notes, so they're mostly doing it the long way now.

[Not_a_Number]

We took some notes from the virus book we were reading 🙂 . We mostly focused on being able to write things in one's own words, for real -- regurgitating exactly what the book says isn't so helpful! 

I would assume that note taking will come MUCH easier when handwriting is faster, so I don't know if taking notes in grade 4 is a very useful way to spend one's time. What skills are you trying to work on here? 

[Little Green Leaves]

4 hours ago, Moonhawk said:

So for us, our 6th and 4th grader are being introduced to notes this year. I'm doing a variation on Cornell and outlining, where I have them read a chapter (or section, if the chapter is long), then have them outline it on one side of a divided page, not necessarily by paragraph but ask if there is anything "worth noting" from a paragraph and then moving on to the next. They need a lot of help with the indentation to see the flow still, but my outline is even a variation so I'm not being too picky ('m not going much into the I. A. 1. a. etc format, more big topics and bullets. I'll teach them better outlining after they can parse out the important info reliably I think, maybe next year.)

Then after they have their section of notes from the main book, I ask if they have any connections they can make ("Does this remind you of another time in history? How do we use this type of machine today?" etc) and write it on the other side of the page. Then if they have another book on the same topic, I have them read some and write down corresponding facts on the page close to where the "original" was talked about.

This is a slow process, lol. I'm only doing it for history, and the book they are outlining is SOTW4, so it isn't very difficult to parse, but I am having them read it on their own, do an initial version of the outline on their own (now, after the first couple chapters), then help them with the indenting/flow. 

Since I'm encouraging outlining I do have them read it first, then go back to outline it as a separate step, not at the same time. They tried to break the rules a couple times but it was obvious they didn't know what was coming up next in their notes, so they're mostly doing it the long way now.

Thank you! This makes sense, especially the idea of reading first and then going back to make an outline. I also like your way of making connections right there on the page!

 

[Little Green Leaves]

4 hours ago, Not_a_Number said:

We took some notes from the virus book we were reading 🙂 . We mostly focused on being able to write things in one's own words, for real -- regurgitating exactly what the book says isn't so helpful! 

I would assume that note taking will come MUCH easier when handwriting is faster, so I don't know if taking notes in grade 4 is a very useful way to spend one's time. What skills are you trying to work on here? 

Hm, what skills am I trying to develop. Organization and attention to detail, really. And of course, the skill of note taking itself. I'm not pushing it hard. It's been a nice, chatty way to sit together with a history book and talk about what's an important fact and what's not. 

I had thought note taking was an upper elementary skill -- I definitely had to do it myself at that age. Maybe that was a public school thing. 

[Violet Crown]

If we're talking taking written notes specifically on books, I don't worry about that skill until the middle school years; nor do I at any stage expect book reports. At the elementary level, we all (the family) discuss our reading casually, and a child soon discovers that if she can remember what happened, who the characters were (if fiction), and what was interesting--and relate it in an intelligible way--then everyone will listen and talk about her book. There's nothing like being the center of attention to create a personal investment in note-taking.

In the middle years, we shift to the Junior Great Books program (I prefer the series from the 1960s). We use their interpretive question model and have occasional but regular dinner-table conversations about the most recent reading. The Great Books Foundation teaches a particular kind of note-taking which involves the reader creating her own questions, rather than responding to canned comprehension questions. These are always shorter, manageable readings.

I also use the old Scribner School books with their excellent study guides, which prompt note-taking and paying attention to the kind of thing I want the student to attend to (figures of speech, character development, foreshadowing, plot arcs, etc., etc.) both in the margin and in her own notebook. 

When possible, I try to set up a group for both the JGB and the Scribner books: adolescents are far less shy about literary hypothesizing with coevals than with the parent-teacher. Covid has put a bit of a crimp in that, but generally the parents of homeschool friends are eager to find someone else to "do literature" with their children, so it's always been easy to get a group together, if you can be sufficiently dragonish to force them to do the reading. As with the elementary child wanting her turn to share her book and have everyone else listen, in a reading group the student quickly learns that the moderator won't let them "contribute" (i.e. waffle on) if she hasn't done the reading, or hasn't taken any notes and so doesn't have anything interesting to say. Very soon they start showing up with annotated margins and crowded notebooks.

 

 

[Little Green Leaves]

2 hours ago, Violet Crown said:

If we're talking taking written notes specifically on books, I don't worry about that skill until the middle school years; nor do I at any stage expect book reports. At the elementary level, we all (the family) discuss our reading casually, and a child soon discovers that if she can remember what happened, who the characters were (if fiction), and what was interesting--and relate it in an intelligible way--then everyone will listen and talk about her book. There's nothing like being the center of attention to create a personal investment in note-taking.

In the middle years, we shift to the Junior Great Books program (I prefer the series from the 1960s). We use their interpretive question model and have occasional but regular dinner-table conversations about the most recent reading. The Great Books Foundation teaches a particular kind of note-taking which involves the reader creating her own questions, rather than responding to canned comprehension questions. These are always shorter, manageable readings.

I also use the old Scribner School books with their excellent study guides, which prompt note-taking and paying attention to the kind of thing I want the student to attend to (figures of speech, character development, foreshadowing, plot arcs, etc., etc.) both in the margin and in her own notebook. 

When possible, I try to set up a group for both the JGB and the Scribner books: adolescents are far less shy about literary hypothesizing with coevals than with the parent-teacher. Covid has put a bit of a crimp in that, but generally the parents of homeschool friends are eager to find someone else to "do literature" with their children, so it's always been easy to get a group together, if you can be sufficiently dragonish to force them to do the reading. As with the elementary child wanting her turn to share her book and have everyone else listen, in a reading group the student quickly learns that the moderator won't let them "contribute" (i.e. waffle on) if she hasn't done the reading, or hasn't taken any notes and so doesn't have anything interesting to say. Very soon they start showing up with annotated margins and crowded notebooks.

 

 

You know, part of why my husband and I decided to teach our son note taking is that he desperately wants to join in on our conversations about history and politics. The thing is, he wants to come up with grandiose statements and sweeping theories and make a big splash in the conversation. He's the oldest kid. For his age, he knows plenty about history and politics. He loves reading newspapers and history books. But I got worried that he was gulping down books too quickly and not really digesting them -- that's why I wanted to slow down the process with note taking. He doesn't so much get facts wrong, but he pays attention to the facts that will "tell" well. I think both my husband and I were that way at his age too -- I definitely used to gobble up books too -- but we had school as a natural corrective; we were forced to slow down, take notes, write essays, etc etc. 

Anyway, this thread is giving me a lot to think about. I guess conversation can be a corrective to that also. 

[Not_a_Number]

7 minutes ago, Little Green Leaves said:

You know, part of why my husband and I decided to teach our son note taking is that he desperately wants to join in on our conversations about history and politics. The thing is, he wants to come up with grandiose statements and sweeping theories and make a big splash in the conversation. He's the oldest kid. For his age, he knows plenty about history and politics. He loves reading newspapers and history books. But I got worried that he was gulping down books too quickly and not really digesting them -- that's why I wanted to slow down the process with note taking. He doesn't so much get facts wrong, but he pays attention to the facts that will "tell" well. I think both my husband and I were that way at his age too -- I definitely used to gobble up books too -- but we had school as a natural corrective; we were forced to slow down, take notes, write essays, etc etc. 

Anyway, this thread is giving me a lot to think about. I guess conversation can be a corrective to that also. 

How old is he again?

[Little Green Leaves]

Just now, Not_a_Number said:

How old is he again?

He'll be 9 in a few weeks.

[Not_a_Number]

Just now, Little Green Leaves said:

He'll be 9 in a few weeks.

I do think kids that age are naturally pretty black and white thinkers!!