How to Take Directed Notes When Reading

Directed notes can help you find important parts of the story.

Directed notes are used in schools to help students pick out the most important parts of a story. To help with this, your teacher can provide a guided question that will clue you in on what to look for as you read. Directed note taking can be likened to learning how to take lecture notes. You pick out the most important parts of a lecture and write them down for later use. The skills that you learn during directed note taking will help you in your higher education pursuits.

Instructions

1. Read the guided question given by your teacher. Guided questions help you know what to look for while you are reading. So, if your guided question is, "Why did Emma decide to leave her home for the big city and what were the consequences?" then you know that you need to pay attention to parts of the story that are significant to why Emma left her home for the big city and the consequences of that decision.

2. Mark important parts of the story using symbols and notes. This includes underlining passages that are significant to your guided question, using a question mark for passages that you don't understand or have a question about, using an exclamation point when you have an emotional response to an event in the story, circling words that are unfamiliar to you and writing any notes you think of in the margins of the book.

3. Use your directed notes in class when it is time to discuss the story, answer follow-up questions or perform an activity related to the story. Your directed notes will help you easily find the passages you need to answer the questions thoroughly, instead of spending a lot of time flipping through the book or trying to answer from memory. They will also help you during discussions, enabling you to quickly find the parts of the story you have questions about.

References

• Ledyard High School: Directed Notes
• Medford Township Public Schools: Directed Notes