Language Arts Courses in Cobb County

As you take notes, keep the following points in mind:

Take notes in your own words (paraphrase). Use phrases, incomplete sentences, abbreviations--just as long as you are sure that you can decipher them later. Be accurate and concise.

If you want to record a direct quote, write it down exactly as it appears in the source and enclose it in quotation marks.

Do not cover more than one subject or one reference on a single note card.

Be sure each card contains this information: -a key from your preliminary outline (slug) -one idea/subject per card -exact source of the information (author and page number or n. pg. if there is no page number).

Read the original passage that follows. The source of this passage is the essay "Is TV Brutalizing Your Child?" by Eliot A. Daley in Freedom of Dilemma. Notice how the information contained in the passage is transferred to the note card.

Original Passage

Through television, our children's lives are inundated with death and disaster one moment, trivia and banality the next, cemented together with the sixty-second mortar of manipulation and materialism. In the matter of violence alone, their formative years are bathed in blood. Writers have amply documented the depressing statistics: The TV stations of one city carried in one week 7,887 acts of violence. One episode of a western series garnished Christmas night with 3 homicides. Between the ages of 5 and 14, your children and mine may, if they are average viewers, witness the annihilation of 12,000 human beings.

Sample Note Card

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As you take notes, keep the following points in mind:

Take notes in your own words (paraphrase). Use phrases, incomplete sentences, abbreviations--just as long as you are sure that you can decipher them later. Be accurate and concise.
If you want to record a direct quote, write it down exactly as it appears in the source and enclose it in quotation marks.
Do not cover more than one subject or one reference on a single note card.
Be sure each card contains this information: -a key from your preliminary outline (slug) -one idea/subject per card -exact source of the information (author and page number or n. pg. if there is no page number).

Read the original passage that follows. The source of this passage is the essay "Is TV Brutalizing Your Child?" by Eliot A. Daley in Freedom of Dilemma. Notice how the information contained in the passage is transferred to the note card.

Original Passage

Through television, our children's lives are inundated with death and disaster one moment, trivia and banality the next, cemented together with the sixty-second mortar of manipulation and materialism. In the matter of violence alone, their formative years are bathed in blood. Writers have amply documented the depressing statistics: The TV stations of one city carried in one week 7,887 acts of violence. One episode of a western series garnished Christmas night with 3 homicides. Between the ages of 5 and 14, your children and mine may, if they are average viewers, witness the annihilation of 12,000 human beings.

Sample Note Card