How do you know when to write a set of summarised notes or to try something else?
There’s not really a hard line here – these are your notes and your own preferences can guide you here.
If you’re trying to work out whether drawn notes are for you begin with your written notes and then draw.
One of my students last week prepared summarised bullet point notes at the end of an Astronomy unit in science. These notes were very clear and succinct and he could answer the recall questions with good recall. Here’s a typed excerpt here.
My student has also written a great set of recall questions to do something with the notes and help their content be remembered. Here they are:
I could “ see” the solar system he had summarised – the features of each planet had been summarised, along with his points about the distance from the sun. This was a drawing waiting to happen, so that’s what we did next. My student drew a page of study notes, the planets were drawn in order from the sun and notated with all of the features in the bullet form notes. Here is a typed version of this hand-drawn notes.
The recall questions he wrote for the written notes (above) still work here.
What do you think?
Would this be something you could use?
Is it more appealing than writing a tonne of notes?
The types of information that can easily and possibly more thoroughly be represented through drawings include:
- Processes – steps to complete something
- Classifications – flow charts to group concepts
- Parts of stuff – objects with labels
- Maps
Why don’t you try this the next time you’re preparing notes and let me know how this goes for you in the comments section below.
