# Teaching > General Teaching >  How to make notes on literature lessons?

## Aiculík

I need help from some experienced teacher.  :Smile: 

I need to write several pages on topic "making notes on literature lessons by pupils and their use for home study for next lesson". 

For me, this whole topic is just ridiculous. No teacher ever prescribed me, when I was kid, any specific way how to write notes on literature lessons, or even checked if we are making any, that was quite up to us. What they required was to know all the facts about writer and the literary period, etc., to read the book and to be able to analyse and interpret it at appropriate level. And if someone was able to do this without making any notes, they couldn't care less - but if not, no notes could save them from Fx.

But obviously, my methodology professor thinks it is very important. So I checked all the books she recomended and even half dozen of books she didn't, but I couldn't find _anything_ on making notes. 

So I thought maybe some real teachers would know more about it.

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## soniasaw

i guess a student while making notes on literature lessons would need to have an outline of the text, the use of language like metaphore simili etc......the progress of the text how the story line goes about..........the charectar sketch...............what the author is trying to convey..........the hidden content of the lesson and so on.........during the lesson the kind of thoughts that came to ones mind about the text instead on being left to memory are to be made into notes for referance in future and also to sougth out the enite thought process that one has gone through during the course of the lesson........

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## HotKarl

For literary movements, I used to make bullet points of the movement's main tenets, then write down its major players and time frame.

For individuals stories, I took notes by breaking the story down into the elements of fiction and then jot down some impressions of each element: plot, setting, character, pov, style, and theme.

I agree with you though, why would your teacher want to know how you take notes? Everybody has an individual system that works best for him or her.

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## asratnam

Literature can be interpreted in as many ways as there are readers.
To make notes on literature is to express what we look for in a 
given text.The notes contains what we are looking for in a text and 
how to extract the expected meaning from the texts.The writer 
employs various devises to make the text readable and thought-
provoking.The young are to be taught(?) to identify the techniques 
assess the appropriateness of the use of language in putting across 
his ideas and thoughts to his readers.Literature can be used to train
the young to feel,think and respond. I hope one can make notes on 
literature lessons which in turn will transform into critical insights 
into the texts or authors.

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## mangueken

I think it's a relatively new concept that teachers help guide the note taking of students. We implemented this in a language school I taught at and once a month we even took them home to read through their notes. 
But I think it helps on several different levels. First, it gives you the teacher another tool with which to see how the student is developing and taking in the material being presented. My teaching mentor always repeated this maxim: Just because we taught the subject does mean it was learned.
Second, for some students, writing down the information will help them internalize the information presented that just reading or hearing alone may not do. This has to do with modalities in learning but I remember some study on modalities about teachers that showed that the majority of those tested on modalities were stronger in the sight, ie., reading area. Which means the solitary action of reading and reflecting on it is a teacher's strong point. This probably isn't the case for many students, thus the reason why guiding students' note taking.

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