College Planning: The Value of Excellent Notes for the Home-Schooled Student
By Mimi Rothschild
Since the home-schooled student often relies heavily on written texts for their studies, it is imperative that the home-schooled student takes excellent notes. Why? The plain and simple truth is that there is no possible way a home-schooled child can remember everything they have read immediately when it is read. Thus, in conjunction with critical reading skills, home-schooled students need to learn how to take excellent notes so that they can have something to refresh their minds with in their later reading. Moreover, excellent notes are a true asset to the home-schooled student when it comes time to study—such notes can help students work through difficult concepts they may not have understood upon first reading the text.
Of course, excellent notes do not necessarily equate to extensive notes—and this should be made clear to the home-schooled student. Extensive notes that are not effective or clear are utterly useless to the home-schooler and it would be far better to have a few concise notes than pages and pages of unclear notes. Thus, the home-schooled student must be taught the difference between extensive and effective note taking.
In order to take good notes pertaining to any text read, it is a good idea to have the home-school student skim the text. The home-schooler should note any headers in a chapter of a text and what kind of questions the text will be addressing. Next, the home-schooling student should make a preliminary read-through of the text before taking any notes at all. This way, upon the second go-round, the home-schooled student will be more familiar and comfortable with the text. The second time the student reads the text is when the notes should be taken: Because the home-schooled student has already read the text, their familiarity with it will allow them to spot phrases and terms of particular significance.
While the home-schooling student is reading through the text they should circle words with which they are unfamiliar. Once they are thoroughly reading the text, they can go back to all of the circled words and list them in their notebook. The home-schooler can then use a reference book to look up the words and learn the terms to which they have been exposed. Finally, after learning all the terms, the home-schooled student should read the sentences where the new words are contained—in context—so that they can get a full understanding of what they have read.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mimi Rothschild is a homeschooling parent, children's rights activist, author, and Founder and C.E.O. of online education company Learning by Grace, Inc. Rothschild and her husband of twenty-eight years reside in suburban Philadelphia with their eight children.
Feeling that “our current system of education has broken its promise,” Rothschild co-founded Learning By Grace, Inc. to provide families with Internet-based multimedia education to PreK-12 children all over the world.
In addition to her twenty years of experience as a homeschool mother, Rothschild has written a number of books dealing with education published by McGraw Hill and others. Her Home Education Websites Blog consists of helpful online content and activities for Christian homeschooling families.
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