All entries for Saturday 11 January 2014
January 11, 2014
Update to Action Point 2 of Reading and note–making
Follow-up to First entry on Reading and note–making from David's blog
My second action was to review my notes after having written them and also to review them on a regular basis.
Over the last few weeks I have tried to review my notes just after writing them in order to freshen my ideas. Although I struggled to take as many notes as I wanted to over the holidays, I always reviewed my notes before putting them away in my folder. I found it very useful reviewing my notes immediately after writing as it allowed me to think over what I had just written and what I found important about my reading.
Likewise, reviewing notes allowed me to process information for a second or third time in turn making it a lot easier to recall later what I had learned. Reviewing my notes also helped me point out mistakes in my note-making such as spelling or bad structuring of sentences - errosI would have otherwise looked over the first time.
If I could change anything I would have also reviewed my notes more regulary in the evenings in order to process information an additional time. The instances where I overlooked my notes during the evening, helped me to remember my notes a lot more than on the occasions where I did not. Unfortunately, during the Christmas holidays there were far too many occasions where I was out or unable to look over my notes during the evening and thus my retention for information suffered slightly.
That said, now that I know that reviewing notes does indeed help me to remember important facts, I will plan to review my notes even more regularly. I plan to review my notes not only after every note taking session but also during the evenings.