There comes a time in every student’s life where they get so much frustrated and saturated by keeping pace with the bulk notes that taking or jotting down lectures becomes an arduous, difficult task. They tend to overlook so many important titbits while trying to keep on track with writing down notes and lectures, which often become a problematic situation during exam days.
We know every student enrolled in different schools, the institution owns different levels of capability of striding with the ongoing work or lecture. So, to solve their concerns and shoo them away, we are discussing the five most important ways to utilize your school notes while taking a class or when reading in this piece of material.
Exchanging Notes with Your Class-Fellows
It is the most effective and feasible method to get hold of all the pending notes and utilizing them for your interest and gain. You can exchange your class noted lectures in turn of borrowing your classmate’s note and lecture copy. In this manner, whatever details you have missed while it was being delivered, you can easily compare and write the missed details, and in the same manner, your class fellow could use the same strategy.
Taking Use of Concept Maps
For students, it becomes tough to build concepts side by side while taking notes during lectures. They cannot focus on two different things, which include observing the concept and jotting it down on the paper. Because of which we often end up missing half of the details to be able to understand the concept. The best way to overcome such a situation is to make use of a flowchart/concept map.
Whenever you meet a situation where you get to do both, i.e., learn the concept and simultaneously note it down, so it is better for you to construct a flow chart by the end of the lecture, that sequences the details in order so that provides you closure of the entire topic. It is the most organized and summarized way of taking and utilizing notes alongside constructing the affluent concept of the topic.
Using the Digital Mode of Notetaking and Squaring
In this age of technology, where everything is now accessible within a short click, why don’t we use it for our good? Students can also take advantage of digital means for copying and utilizing notes. If we don’t get to cope up with note writing, then we can seek permission from our lecturer to capture the jotted details on board and later copy it on our notebooks. Not only this, if we ever fall in doubt over missing information on certain topics, we can seek help from the internet to get a variety of data on that very piece of information.
Post-It-Notes
This trick comes in handy when you are reading your notes to jot down the most important pieces in a separate section. You can always use post-it notes in your notebook to write additional information regarding the topic, which you don’t even need to carry it anywhere. Just paste the note on every right page you are noting additional detail of and carry on with your further researches and learning.
Highlight It Out
Highlighting notation is the most effective way of utilizing notes while reading to hook onto important titbits and details of the concerned topic. You can use a variety of colors to highlight sentences and essential details on your textbook so that when you get to re-access the topic some other time, you won’t have to go through the entire description again.
Hamelin Notebook Review
Notetaking is an essential part of being a student, so, h Hamelin Notebooks offered to send me some notebooks. I have been using these notebooks all semester and am ready to give you a review!
First impressions
When I first got my notebooks, my first thought was the size, they are quite larger than the A5 sized notebooks or dollar store bound notebooks that I have always used. I chose the smallest of the ones they sent me to use regularly. My second initial thought is that they were thicker, hardcover, and (for someone who does not care for bound notebooks) the binding was really nice!
Once I began to peruse and play around with the notebooks, I came up with a solid list of pros and cons for these notebooks! Check out my thoughts below and get a notebook of your own!
Pros
- High-quality paper
- Hardcover
- High-quality Ring Binding
- Pockets
- Comes with Stickers/Page markers
- Perforated Pages
- Connection with Scribzee
- Grid and College Ruled
- Ink goes on smooth
Cons
- Large in size
- Scribzee is similar to taking simple photos of your notes, just with different settings (to each his own, I don’t use this function)
Final Thoughts
After nearly a full semester of use, I do recommend the Hamelin notebooks. While they are larger than I prefer and I don’t use the Scribzee function, these aspects are potential pros for someone else! The larger size could be useful if you take larger amounts of notes and the Scribzee addition would be useful for someone who enjoys having digital versions of their notes! To each his own, right?
There are few other means of developing and utilizing notes for school students. Some of which involve creating a cheat sheet that includes a summarized definition, equation, formulae of the topic; others include marking pages with tabs to directly access the relevant topic. Regardless of what notebook you use or what you do with your notes...
Let us know in the comments! We would love to hear about how you utilize your school notes and what you look for in a notebook!
Meet the Author
This notebook was written by Rubab and the notebook review, formatting, and editing was done by Elizabeth of ElizabethJournals.
I am Rubab Sikandar from Pakistan. I have a Master of Philosophy in food and nutrition from the University of Agriculture Faisalabad. Writing is my passion, and I love to write on topics of all niches. Additionally, tons of my content has been published on prominent websites.
