AP® World History: Note Taking Strategies

In this short video, veteran AP® World History teacher Dave Drzonek walks through a first-week lesson that turns note-taking into a structured experiment rather than a lecture. Over a single week built around Chapter 1.1 of the AMSCO® coursebook, he teaches students six strategies — outlining, Cornell notes, mind mapping, concept mapping, a thematic approach tied to the AP® World themes, and turning bold headings into questions — then assigns the chapter in three clearly marked sections and requires students to try a different technique on each one. Friday's open-note quiz is divided into those same three sections, so students can see for themselves which method actually produced better comprehension and recall. Because the quiz is weighted very low, the lesson does double duty: students leave with evidence about how they learn best, and the classroom culture is set early as one where trying, faltering, and adjusting are expected parts of the work. The lesson is easy to adapt to any unit or chapter, making it a practical way to build reading and study skills at the start of the year without giving up content time.

Transcript:

Hi, it's Dave Drzonek, and I wanted to give you a lesson that you can use with your AP World History students to help them with their note-taking experimentation. Now, I teach freshmen, so they come in and I spend the first couple days, if not the first week and a half, teaching some really important skills that are needed in AP World History. So this unit can be adapted for any unit, any chapter that you use, but I just made it available for Chapter 1.1 because that's where I use it every single year.

Now, the premise of this lesson is this: you're going to teach the students several note-taking strategies that they can use when reading their AMSCO textbook. Chapter 1.1 is about eight to nine pages. It's on the development of East Asia. And so what I do is, I have the kids on Monday — so Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday are my skill days, Thursday is my lecture day, Friday is my quiz day. So on Monday, the students come in, they bring their books, and I will teach them several note-taking strategies. So we have the book out, we practice them, we start with, like, literally the first page.

And I teach them the outline method, right? The book is kind of done in an outline format. I was excited to write a couple of chapters in the AMSCO textbook, and as you write the chapters, you realize that it is all done in, like, an outline format. So that's the easiest one for the students to follow. They're probably more familiar with it. It's an effective strategy, but I'll go through how to outline, obviously. You know, you can indent and get more specific to each major topic. But we'll do the outline method.

The next topic that I teach the kids is the Cornell method. And the Cornell method, you know, really simply, obviously, is the two-column notes with the questions on one side, notes on the other, and then you summarize them.

I'll go through and I'll talk about mental mapping, or mind mapping, with the kids — that strategy where it kind of flows like tree branches across from left to right, getting a little bit more specific, staying on topic.

After mind mapping, I talk about concept mapping, which is using bubbles, and you have ideas in there and concepts, and you try to connect them. It almost looks like a web. I'll talk about that.

And then I'll talk to them about the thematic approach. And this comes after introducing the students to all the themes in AP World History. The students then look for those themes when they're reading their textbook. So if they read something about the imperial bureaucracy using a civil service exam, they might list that as a political theme in their notes. So one column is political, and then they might put that fact on the other column. Or they might write the fact and, in parentheses, they might put "political." I've had students experiment with different colors, and their notes are different themes, from political to economic to cultural to social. So, for instance, when talking about the civil service exam in Chapter 1.1, if they talk about how this allowed for some social mobility, that would obviously be in the social theme. So that's a technique that I teach as well.

And then one more, just real quick, that I like — and I recommend this technique, too — is, in the AMSCO book, whenever there's a bold headline, you make it into a question. So for Chapter 1.1, for example, if the title was "Religious Diversity in China," you switch that, or make that into a question: How did religious diversity in China affect the political development? And then you look for an answer to that. So you read a paragraph, read two paragraphs, until the next headline, and you see if you can answer your own question. So that's a good note-taking technique.

Now, whatever you want to use, you can teach. You can find videos online of all note-taking techniques. But the strength of this lesson is the following: the students then are taking each section of that chapter. So I'm very clear, and I tell them they are reading from this headline to this headline, right? From page three to page six, from this headline to that headline, and that's section one of that reading. And they're going to experiment with one note-taking technique that they learned. I clearly identify the second part of that chapter and say, try a second technique, and then a third — do it the third way.

And so the quiz that I give them on Friday is broken up into these three sections. They could use their notes. I use my notes well into the year to get kids to take notes. And I'm a big believer in handwritten notes as well, because when kids handwrite their notes, it's better retention. If they take it digitally, there's too much stuff that they can share. There is a bonus to taking your notes on a computer — you know, you can maybe type more if you're a faster typer, it's neater — but I do like the handwritten notes.

So I'll walk around on that quiz day, I'll see their notes, I'll see the three different styles they had, and then, again, the quiz. The neat part of this lesson is that the quiz is broken up into three sections. So it's a quiz, number one, but, two, it's an opportunity to experiment. They may realize that the second technique they used, the second strategy for note-taking, led to more comprehension, allowed them to understand the questions better. And that might be something that they'll continue to use. They might realize that their old way of doing notes was better and allowed for better retention and a higher quiz result.

But the really neat part of this lesson is that you can adapt it for any lesson. It's about the kids experimenting with these note-taking techniques.

And the one last thing that I'll say is that why I like doing this lesson is because it allows for a culture of learning to be established at the beginning of the year. I want the students to know that, hey, it's a tough quiz, but it's not just about a grade. So I weighted it very low. I allow the kids to experiment. I allow the kids to falter. I allow the kids to, you know, maybe fail on one note-taking technique that they didn't like — they found that they didn't like it and weren't very good at it. Well, I don't want them to be punished by that, because I want to set the culture that the students are going to be able to try, experiment, and grow. And so that's why I like this lesson, and I hope you use it.