When taking notes in class, your students will require a quality notebook to record them in. That’s where we can help - here at EPSL, we’ve been providing school exercise books, personalised exercise books and supplementary reading material for over 45 years. That means we’ve kept our fingers on the pulse with regards to how the education system has evolved over the years, and we’ve learned plenty about how note taking has played a major role in the development of child education in this time.
Notes help to boost understanding
It’s much easier for students (particularly young children) to understand concepts once they’ve taken the time to properly process them. Note taking allows students to turn what is very much a passive activity, like reading a book or listening to a lecture, and turn it into an active process. When they’re making notes, they’re sorting through information, selecting what they feel is relevant and combining it with their existing knowledge.
Studies have shown that comprehension and recall are improved when pupils take their own notes. This is down to a phenomena known as the “generation effect”, which in simple terms basically means that information is better remembered if it is generated from someone’s own mind rather than read.
Notes help to aid memory
For most pupils, ideas need to be revised in order to make them stick in their minds. It’s extremely difficult for even the brightest pupils to attend a full day of school and perfectly recall everything they learned. Notes allow student to refresh the ideas they’ve encountered in their minds, whenever they like. Whether it’s the day after, a week later, or even a month later, having a set of notes allows pupils to revisit subjects in a digestible format, long after initial exposure.
Notes are a student’s personal library of information
A good set of comprehensive notes can work wonders for a student’s understanding of a topic. When they need to recall something that they came across a while ago, they can go over the main points by looking over their notes. A pupil’s notes are a catalogue of the best ideas they’ve encountered, distilled into an easily digestible format that they can refer back to at any time. There’s no better way of having information explained to them than by themselves, in terms that they can understand.
They’re a fantastic resource for work
By encouraging your students to keep a detailed set of notes that include their own reactions to ideas, as well as succinct summaries of key points, they create an invaluable resource for themselves in the future. These notes can help to prompt ideas in their minds, and come up with solutions to current projects and tasks. When pupils read over their own notes surrounding a particular topic, they can visualise their thinking on that topic, and start to form ideas on how a task might take shape.
All in all, there are range of benefits to encouraging note taking within your classroom. We’ll leave you to choose the best approach for your own students! As for us, we’ll stick to doing what we do best - supplying a huge range of school exercise books, personalised exercise books, and supplementary reading material, so that you and your class have everything you need to stay organised, motivated, and productive. Feel free to take a look through what we’ve got available on our site - and if you have any questions, feel free to give us a call on 01254 686 500. We’re always happy to help!
