Cornell-Notes-for-Students (AVID)

Thanks for joining me for a little bit today. For an on demand module titled focus note taking subtitle take note of what you wrote. This would be a great time to go ahead and get out some Cornell no paper. I'm going to ask you only write in the notes section during this presentation today and I'll tell you what we're going to use the other sections. Let's start off with our word of the day who can figure out the word of the day. Maybe you get a prize. What's that word shout it out? It's okay to holler in the classroom. The word of the day is repetition. If you don't know what repetition is, here's a fake definition for you. Repetition is the act of repeating repeated action, repeating over and over multiple times repetitiously repeatedly, you get the idea, repetition. So why is this the word of the day? Well, what are some examples of repetition in our life? Maybe if you're memorizing a song, make sure you learn how to shoot a free throw. Maybe you're trying to teach a guy how to do a back flip or maybe if you are getting ready for a test, all of those are examples of things that you learn through repetition. One more example, hopefully most of you wash your hair, maybe someone you use Super Mario Brothers shampoo, like I do. And if you flip that shampoo over to the back, you're gonna see instructions right there. They say wash rinse, repeat. Don't blame me if you can't read Chinese. So on that corner on no pay, let's start off with our essential question for this module today. If you'll copy this down and that essential question section, if you don't have an essential question section, then you can just write EQ on your top line and copy this sentence down. How can my Cornell notes help me make better grades? If you copy that now and just how it says it there, that's hopefully what we're going to get answered here in the next ten minutes or so. So you're thinking to yourself about now, hey, corn on the video maker guy, what does repetition have to do with my life? I'm glad you asked. What you're looking at here is a graph called the rate of forgetting, which comes from research by a German statistician named Herman ebbinghaus. And what this data shows is that with any type of information after our initial interaction with that information, our retention of that is going to go down to 60, 50, 40, even down to 30% retention from where we initially started, which is pretty bad news, except that with a first repetition of that material, we can bump our attention all the way back up to close to a 100% and then it's going to go down even slower than it did before. And as it starts to fade away in our brain again, we can bump it up with a second repetition. And then it continue bumping it up with a third, fourth, and 5th repetition where that level of retention stays really high. So why this is good news is that if you had a test, say, right here around day 8. If all you had had was your initial interaction with that material, you would expect to have less than 40% retention and you would probably expect to fill that test. But if we had gone back and gotten a first repetition of information that our retention is significantly higher, although it's still below 60%. But what the second repetition now I'm up above 70%, I would expect to pass that test. And if I even got in a third repetition, my attention levels above 90%, I would probably have enough knowledge to make an a on that test. So that kid that sits with you and your pre AP or honors class that always makes good grades. It's not just because they're smarter than you, it's because they figured out how to get multiple repetitions of the material. And avid we call this the ten 24/7 strategy, which means that within ten minutes to 20 minutes of our initial interaction with information, we're going to get our first repetition. And as that information starts to fade away in our head, we're going to get our second repetition within about 24 hours, and then our third repetition within 7 days. So that when that test or assessment comes along, I'm ready to go. I know I have enough information to be able to get an a on that test. All right, so you've convinced me multiple repetitions are important. What does that have to do with Cornell notes? I'm glad you asked. Let's look at how using the steps of the Cornell note taking process. It forces us to get multiple repetitions of information and keep our retention level high. Using that big section on the right, the note section where hopefully you're taking notes right now, some strategies to get multiple repetitions are going back in that ten to 20 minute frame. And maybe at the end of class, maybe between periods, maybe during lunch, circling words that you think were key from the notes that day, maybe highlighting or underlining some main ideas. As you read through your notes, if you identify something that you're a little bit confused about, maybe putting a question mark there. And then as you're looking through your notes again, saying, hey, the teacher said that's going to be on the next test. Let me put an asterisk there to make sure I know that that's going to be a possible test question. That's four options for repetitions using the notes section. What about the left section, the question section? Well, the way that we get multiple repetitions there is by first off, chunking our notes into multiple sections there. Once I've got my notes chunked, what I'm going to do is write a corresponding question for each of those main ideas in those chunks. So if I had three chunks, I'm going to have three questions in my left column. And remember that I'm always thinking like a teacher trying to anticipate what the test question is going to be over that section. All right, so what about that summary section at the bottom? What I want to do there is read back through all the questions that I've written on my page of notes here. My essential question and my questions in the left column and write a one sentence answer or response to each one of those questions to build my summary. What that forces me to do is to go back and read my essential question to read my notes to read my questions and basically getting another repetition of all of that information that's there on the page. And now that I've built my learning tool, I can use my page notes to study for tests a couple of different ways. First off is the fold over method where I put a crease down my page of notes right there along that left column line. And I have my questions there. Hopefully I was thinking like a teacher there I've got some good potential test questions and then forever forget the answer to that test question. I've got it right there in my notes also. Anything that I'm still confused about, I can bring that question to tutorials. I can always use my Cornell notes as a resource during tutorials and then lastly, I always want to be studying revising, comparing my notes with a friend, making sure that my notes are accurate and using that skill of collaboration that we work on in avid all the time. So we just looked at ten different ways to get multiple repetitions of information using your core node notes. But maybe you're thinking to yourself about now, hey, cornel, don't make your guy. You sound like a jerk. I'm only going to do half of what you told me to do. That's okay, because even with 5 repetitions of the material, we know that our attention to level is going to stay really high above 90%. And when that test comes around, we're going to have all the information we need to be able to make an a on the test. Pop quiz hot shot. Pete and repeat are standing on a bridge. Pete falls off, who's left? Repeat. Okay, Pete and repeat are standing on a bridge. Pete falls off, who's left? Don't ask me to repeat it. Does anybody out there like CSI? I do too. Remember on CSI that you can't convict a criminal unless you've got some evidence and I can't convict you of being a corn on note superstar unless I've got some evidence of repetitions in your notes. So let's look at using these ten strategies for repetition. What are some of the evidence that we could see in our notes? Well, circling keywords, that's easy enough. I should be able to see some circles. Underlining or highlighting our main ideas, maybe we're doing that in different colors. That's an easy way to have evidence that we're using repetition. Maybe putting a question mark by our points of confusion actually to be able to see evidence of question marks. If I'm going to ask her as possible test questions and ask your start. Okay, those are the easy ones. Okay, what about number 5? Chunking and questioning, well, if I'm going to chunk, I should be able to see chunking lines all the way across my notes. If I'm going to write a summary that links everything together, maybe the number of sentences in my summary should be the same as the number of questions that are on my page of notes. If I'm going to do the fold over method, some pretty good evidence there is actually having a crease in the paper. And then the last three, I'll refer to tutorials. And so I should be able to look at a TRF as evidence that you're using repetitions in your notes. So just as an example here of what we're talking about, looking at Sanders TRF, her initial question here comes from her notes. This is how she's getting another repetition. Also in her resources section, one of the resources that she's going to use during tutorials today is her Cornell notes. And then just a reminder that during tutorial, she's also practicing taking notes. All right, CSI team, we ready? Let's go looking for some evidence. Here's case number one. This is Tiffany and her world history notes. At first glance, this case looks like she's got pretty good notes here. She's got notes in her right column. Questions on the left column, summary in the bottom column. But when we dig a little closer, looking for evidence of repetition, I don't really see it here. It looks like Tiffany probably wrote her questions in class the same day. It looks like she probably wrote her summary in that same pin that same day, which means that she didn't get any repetitions of this information, which means she's probably not going to do it very well in this room, this Roman fine arts test. What about case number two? We're going to look at Hector's notes here about figurative language. I know some of you guys are doing most of your notes on your computer or on a tablet. And so some people say, well, we can't do repetitions on Cornell notes. If we do our notes on our computer, well, that's not true, because Hector here showed us as we look for evidence. He's got circle keywords. He's got different colors. He's got question marks where he identified points of confusion, hyperbole down there at the bottom. He asked risk of future test question. So Hector did a great job of getting repetitions over these notes. He's probably going to do pretty well in this test. Our last case here is deja's notes over mixtures and compounds. Honestly, when I see a lot of cournot notes looking in students binders, this is what I see a lot of the time. Nothing in the left column, nothing in the bottom section. And so let's see if we can help deja out a little bit and help make her notes a little bit better. So maybe a first step would be for her to go back and circle some keywords, maybe highlight some things that are important, maybe Mark something she wants to bring back to tutorials and maybe put an asterisk by something that's going to be on her future test. There we go. We're already up the curve for getting deja, there's our first repetition. But we're not done yet. Let's go ahead and chunk our notes and write some questions for those chunks looking at those main ideas. We're up to repetition number two, but we're still not done because now we're going to write a summary over those notes answering the questions that I wrote in my left column and my essential question if I had that there also. That's our third repetition, but deja's still not done because deja's now going to go and take her point of confusion to tutorials, get that question answered. And then the night before the test, she's going to study using the fold over method. She's up to 5 repetitions over this information now. Well, who cares? Why does it matter if deja gets up to 5 repetitions? Well, if that test was about this time, 8 or 9 days later, if deja had just taken that first page of notes, she would have had about 30% retention. She could have expected to fail that test. But now that she's had 5 repetitions over that, her retention level is going to be up here. Day is now an a student. So hopefully you've been taking notes as we've been going along here, and that's a good thing, because guess what? About a week from now, you're going to have a test. And I wrote the test and it's stinking hard and you're going to fail. Unless we practice what we've been talking about here. So maybe tomorrow, we can go and compare and revise our notes with the partner. Maybe your teacher will give you time in class, maybe you need to do that on your own. Maybe on day two, we go through for homework and chunk our notes and then write corresponding questions over those chunks. Maybe the points of confusion is that we identified in our notes. Things that you forgot, things that you didn't really understand, you're going to bring this tutorials. And then finally, the day before the test, you're going to go ahead and summarize your notes and study using the fold over method. And based on those four repetitions, when that test comes around, you're going to be prepared, you're going to make a good grade. So in summary, what have we learned here today? First off, that repetitions are huge. It's the only way that anybody learns anything. Number two, corn on notes are a great way for you to get up to ten repetitions of information and why is that important because number three, the more quality repetitions you get, the better your grades are going to get, not just doing the steps to do the steps, but actually taking the time and going through those repetitions, well, you're going to start seeing an increase in your grades that you're making. Thanks for taking a little bit of time here with me today and good luck on your test.