Lesson 16 — Activity 3: Taking Notes and Summarizing

Once you have found the information from a text that you need, the next step is to put the information into a format that will be useful and easy for you to understand.

Here are some suggestions for taking notes from a text so that you can use the information if you are writing a report or a research essay:

Read the information carefully to be sure you understand it.

Identify the key points. There may be clues such as titles or bold print that will help you to see what the most important ideas in the reading are.

Note any additional information that will help to make the key points clearer to the reader. Try to write this in your own words, not the same words as are used in the text. This will help you to be sure you understand what the writer means.

If you cannot think of a way to express the writer’s words in your own way, put the writer’s words in quotation marks so that you remember that the words are the writer’s and not yours.

There are many different ways that you might want to organize your notes:

Some people like to use index cards or recipe cards for recording notes. This lets you put one point on each card, which makes it easier to move your points around when you are planning an essay.

Some people like to use different graphic organizers for their notes.

It is important to organize your notes.

Here’s an important thing to remember when doing research:

Even when you put your research into your own words, you are not writing down your own ideas. You are using other people's ideas to support your own point.

It is very important that you acknowledge the sources of your information in a bibliography.
Be sure to record the sources you used to find your information. Click here for information regarding bibliographies.

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