Take note: Buy-in required for teaching success
Naomi Lemberger says the way she takes notes in class helps things stick in her brain. She doesn’t use the usual approach (scribble for page after page, then promptly forget – I’ve been doing it all my life).
In a typical instance, she takes those conventional notes within a box covering the upper right section of a sheet of paper and equal to about half the sheet. In a column on the left side of the paper, she writes down questions or sometimes phrases that her main notes cover. And, after a class or at the end of a unit, she writes in a box across the bottom of the sheet a reflection – basically, a summary of what she thinks she learned. She reviews the overall results, especially when she’s preparing for tests. Teachers frequently review her notes.
It’s a system called Cornell Notes. It goes back more than half a century and has been used (and often dropped) in many schools, including several in the Milwaukee area.
At Brookfield East, where Lemberger is a junior, Cornell Notes is a key element of the education program – and a key, in the opinion of school leaders and many teachers, to why the already high-performing school has seen an uptick in overall student success in recent years.
