Note Taking

Step Three: Note taking:

In this step, you take your informal ideas from your brainstorming activity, sort through them and decide what is relevant, useful or important to include.

You think about what will be effective; what points you may want to make; what examples to use. When in college, you may need to or want to do some reading and/or research.

For the SAT, you must decide on the spot!

Here are some things to consider:

Begin by determining which of your ideas are most important to the topic, such as terms that must be defined.

Try to group ideas together:

Do they relate to each other?

Can you call some positive and others negative?

Are some beneficial or harmful; can they be separated as benefits or deficits?

Who will benefit or be harmed? American society?

Does one idea (or set of ideas) cause another?

Is there a sequence in your ideas? This could be steps in a process. Do some idea precede and others follow?

When you are ready, you will prepare an outline of your intended work.

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