Get a bunch of 3 X 5 cards
4 X 6 is okay, too. You'll need a big ol' stack since we're looking to get at least 50 notes, and only putting one note per card.
Checkpoint #4A
10+ handwritten notes on index cards
10+ handwritten notes on index cards
Taking notes by hand can lead to better retention of the information that you're steeped in. Copy + paste often shortchanges our chance to think. Additionally, after we have a bunch of notes and we start to organize them, the physical movement of cards is helpful to many student researchers.
4 X 6 is okay, too. You'll need a big ol' stack since we're looking to get at least 50 notes, and only putting one note per card.
The top left corner is the citation. This is a direct "link" to the entry on your Works Cited page. Put the first "bit" of information from the source in parenthesis (usually the author's last name) on the top of the card so whatever not you take, it's clear what source the information came from.
Note: If an article does NOT have an author, the first "bit" of information will be the title of the article. Put that in parenthesis, but also keep the quotation marks around it to indicate that it is a title and not a name
This is a category of the part of your research that this note pertains to. Early in the process you may have no clue what kinds of subtopics you'll have in your final paper, so it's okay to leave this blank early on. Pay attention to trends in your research so you can label subtopics later.
Most notes will be paraphrases of information and ideas from your articles. Direct quotes should be used when:
• the language is unusually vivid, bold, or inventive.
• the quotation cannot be paraphrased (put into your own words) without distortion or loss of meaning.
• The quotation is statistic, graph, diagram, or table.