Note Taking- The 1 plus 3 method

I have always found myself a decent note taker, if not, a very good note taker. I have no problem sitting in lectures and writing rather rapidly in attempts to cover all the material my professor is teaching. My notes are well are legible within my spiral notebooks and when the

time comes to review for a test I can find most of the information from my notes rather than the textbook. I prefer to look at my lecture notes rather than read a lengthy textbook as well. Like I said, I never have a problem writing everything down that I want to write and covering what the professor is teaching at the time, however when it comes down to taking a quiz or test I usually have pages and pages of notes and it consists of bullet points, random headings, underlining important words and bubbling other things or attempting to copy down how the professor is posting his/her slides.

This creates a serious problem for me because then my notes appear a little unorganized. I know that all of the material is on the page some how...but reviewing the notes quickly turns into a drag and something that I dread. I have an issue with thinking that every little word the professor

says is important and so therefore I write down every detail from the slides and it ends up to be a ton of notes and clearly overwhelming. To cure my problem of over-writing notes and copying down too much and deciding which is important information and which material I can toss to the side, I landed on the 1 plus 3 note-taking method.

The first time I tried this method I used it with my Psych 205 lecture notes and the notes my recitation gave out as well. I followed the directions from page 101 in the CLS textbook and took a piece of paper dividing it into three sections. But first, I had to make sure that this piece of paper lies to the left or right of a page of notes I took in my spiral. The three different boxes were divided with two side by side on the top half of the page, and then one giant box rested below.

I labeled the first box with an "A" and this was for key terms and concepts to be placed. The next box was "B" and this was for definitions or examples. And then the last box "C" was for test questions that I thought about from the page of notes I took.

This strategy really helped with my organizing and allowed me to categorize my notes that actually made sense. It works like a little summary in a way and it's so easy to look at my page of notes from lecture, and then to the left see the same information appear on the 1 plus 3 side, but rearranged and looking ready to review. Especially for Psychology this method is so helpful because there is a vast amount of terms and concepts, and it was nice placing them on the left side and then directly to the right of the term I have a definition or example about the term or concept. The questions were a great thing to do after I took the notes above because this allowed me to review my notes yet again one more time. I wrote down 5 questions at the bottom which made me think about what I just wrote down in the other two boxes.

The only complaint I think I would have about this method is that sometimes I would have so much material and information within my notes that breaking my notes down and converting it to the 1 plus 3 method I didn't have enough room to cover all the key terms and definitions. I could always split it up and maybe convert about half of the page and then continue but I found that since the way it was set up in restricted boxes I kind of wanted to elaborate more in box "B" about a definition but it was tight on room and I had to shorten the material, which I always have a problem with. I do think I will continue to use this note-taking strategy though because it allows me to organize my jumbled notes and pick out what is the most important on a page and easily create a definition and example that is so careful to look at and grasp right away. The test questions at the bottom are a great thing to think about before a quiz, test, or exam and it makes me feel like I have a good hold on the subject matter. I would recommend this strategy to fellow classmates.