Reviewing your notes

Reviewing your notes

After the session on what to do before, during and after a lecture, give the students ten minutes to do a shorter, more dynamic, more colourful, more illustrated and altogether more memorable set of notes. Draw your own illustrated pattern note of the lecture on the board if you wish – but only after they have started.

b) Every so often end a seminar or lecture by alternating notemaking or writing tasks where students have to:

• Produce a dynamic, illustrated pattern note of the session – and the notes are all photographed and uploaded to the VLE
• Compete every week to see whose notes are uploaded to the VLE
• Build over the weeks a set of notes for the whole module/course
• Build a ‘paragraph pattern’ whereby they draw on their notes to put all the ideas down that could go into one (or each) potential paragraph in the final assignmen
• Complete an Exam Passport. If students are not really making notes and typically not preparing well for exams, allow them to have a large index card each week upon which they have to write all the key information from the lecture. Tell them they will get the index cards back on the examination day and that they will be able to use them in their exams… This is a simple but effective way of getting students to attempt to make useful notes – of course you must NOT lose their cards!