Note taking
Note cards
Many institutions or teachers require the use of note cards for research note taking. The note card method involves the creation of a bibliography card with citing information, and additional fact cards taken from that source. An example is given below. See the student resources section for a guide on notetaking.
Card A shows a bibliography card.
Murray, Donald. Expecting the Unexpected. Portsmouth, NH:
Boynton/Cook, 1989.
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Card B shows a summary card, of the author's main focus in a chapter.
Murray, Expecting
Sub-topic: Learning through mistakes
In Chapter 10 / Murray's main point: "bad" writing can
ultimately produce writing that excites, rather than
beginning with good but status quo writing that says
very little and moves no one.
pp. 101-03. |
Note taking Sheets
The Arlington County Public School System has identified five possible problems with using note cards as your primary note taking method (http://www.apsva.us/):
- Problem #1: Students write too much information on a card
- Problem #2: Students fill out cards just to meet teacher requirements (i.e. “you must have 50 note cards for your paper”) without considering the usefulness of the information or its relevance to the topic
- Problem #3: Students have the added step of organizing their note cards into piles when they are done taking notes
- Problem #4: When they sit down to organize their note cards under subtopics, many students realize that they took too many notes on one topic and not enough on another. Also, they may realize that they wrote the same fact on more than one card. This means either restructuring the paper or finding more sources to fill in the gaps in information.
- Problem #5: In the organization process, many students find that they have some notes that don’t fit under any relevant subtopic. This means that they spent time taking notes that will never get included.
Rather than using note cards, they recommend using note taking sheets. They have provided examples as well as blank templates of their sheet.
The Greece Central school District in New York suggests using what they call “annolighting a text”, shown below.
Highlighted Text |
Reader Annotations |
Towards the end of the sixteenth century, a new tragic pattern began to emerge, very much richer and deeper than the old one, sounding intimately the depths of the human mind and spirit, the moral possibilities of human behavior, and displaying the extent to which men’s destinies are interrelated one with another.
According to this scheme, an ideal tragedy would concern the career of ahero, a man great and admirable in both his powers and opportunities. He should be a person high enough placed in society that his actions affect the well being of many people. The plot should show him engaged in important or urgent affairs and should involve his immediate community in a threat to its security that will be removed only at the end of the action through his death. The hero’s action will involve him in choices of some importance which, however virtuous or vicious in themselves, begin the spinning of a web of circumstances unforeseen by the hero which cannot then be halted and which brings about his downfall. This hostile destiny may be the result of mere circumstance or ill luck, of the activities of the hero’s enemies, of some flaw or failing in his own character, of the operation of some supernatural agency that works against him. When it is too late to escape from the web, the hero-victim comes to realize everything that has happened to him, and in the despair or agony of that realization, is finally destroyed. |
The hero/protagonist:
- Admirable
- High society
- Actions affect many
- Makes choices that involve him/her in a web of circumstances
Caused by:
- Mere circumstance
- Ill luck
- Enemies
- Character flaw
- Supernatural agency
Results:
- Realizes too late
- Creates despair
- Destruction or death
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The process above is very similar to the Cornell notes strategy. Cornell Notes are widely used in the AVID program in the Baltimore County Public Schools. See the diagram below from Easybib, which describes the Cornell note taking strategy. Consult your school’s AVID teacher for direct instruction for using these methods.

Taken from: http://content.easybib.com/students/writing-guide
Electronic Note taking
BCPS has a subscription to the Easybib software. Easybib offers a simple and easy to use note taking tool for subscribers. You may use this tool even if you did not use Easybib during the citing process, however, if you did use Easybib for citing, you can link your citations to your notes easily using the features built into the note taking tool. See the screen shot below for an example of this software.
To access this feature, go to your project in Easybib, and click the link for “notebook”.

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