LITERATURE REVIEW
“Note-taking is a difficult skill, but it is an important skill, especially considering the pervasiveness of lecture throughout middle-school, high school, and college classes” (Quintus, Borr, Duffield, Napoleon, & Welch, 2012). Fourth grade is a perfect time to begin teaching note taking skills and strategies as fourth graders are “entering the stage of reading to learn” (Chang & Ku, 2015). My fourth graders were reading in order to gain information and be able to recall or apply it later. A study involving 349 fourth graders in Taiwan returned results that showed that teaching basic note taking skills not only increased note taking ability, but also improved reading comprehension (Chang et al., 2015). Increased reading comprehension may have assisted my students in gaining deeper understanding in multiple subject areas. In social studies, my students spent a vast majority of time reading from the textbook. By modeling and providing opportunities for practice of highlighting the main idea, reducing the quantity of information, identifying keywords, utilizing visual representations, and increasing awareness of text structure, my students were given the chance to increase their understanding of informational texts they read (Chang et al., 2015).