Focused Notes Training

Focused Notes

Training Module

Start

What are AVID Focus Notes?

AVID stands for Advancement Via Individual Determination. Focused notes have been adopted by the AVID organization and now takes many shapes and forms, but essentially are notes that are a system in which it allows you to organize and then interact with your notes.

Learning Objectives

Setting Up

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Essential Question

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Summarizing

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Utilizing

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Overview

This section will cover the basics of focused notes.

Focused notes in a nutshell

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Setting Up Your Notes

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Guidlines to setting up your notes

Your main components of focused notes are Topic, Name/Date, Essential Question, Questions, and Summary. It does not matter the format of your notes as long as these main components are included.

Components of focused notes

Topic

Essential Question

Name and Date

Components of focused notes

Questions

Summary

Focues Notes Example

This section will include specific examples of each criteria for your notes; Topic, Essential Question, Questions, Summary, and Annotations. Please think about the questions before clicking to see the examples.

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Topic

When making your topic, it can be very broad. For example, you are in class taking notes for a biology class about the reproduction process of cells. What should your topic be?

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Essential Question

Your essential question aligns wih your topic. It's a questions that serves as a reference point for your notes. Using the last example of being in Biology, what is your EQ?

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Questions

Yours question aligns wih your topic. It's a questions that serves as a way to study. These questions can be area of confusion, test example questions, questions that help you study, etc. Now using the same example from before, what are some question that you can come up with?

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Summary

Yours summary should ALWAYS answer your essential question. Looking back at our examples of EQ, how could we summarize our notes answering the question?

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Focused Note Example

This is an example of what a focused note can look like. Your focused notes DO NOT need to be formatted the exact way. Just keep in mind that your notes must include the Topic, EQ, Name/Date, Questions, and Summary

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Annotation

When it comes to annotations, it really varies on the person. It can take forms of highlighting, underlining, starring, etc.

Quiz TIme

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Question One

Question Two

Interactive question

Objective 4

Students will be able to go back to Cornell notes and utilize the notes to study. This includes questions and annotating.

Objective Three

Upon completing the training, students will be able to effectively summarize their notes in three to five sentences while answering the essential question.

Objective One

After completing the training module, students will be able set up the format of cornell notes with minimum errors (1-2)

Objective Two

After completing the training module, students will be able to create an essential question when given simple notes to assess understanding.

Having your name and date allows you to go back to your notes. Having your notes organized will help you utilze your notes.

Your topic is key to know what your notes will be about. Keeping the topic at the top of your notes allow you to quickly scan your notes.

Essential questions is what the notes are centered around. It's the overall borad question that your notes revolve around

The summary is typically found at the end of your notes. This summary should summarize the whole of your notes by answering your essential question.

Questions are typically on the side of your notes. These questions are genuine questions you have about your notes. These questions can be seen as areas of confusion.

Essential questions is what the notes are centered around. It's the overall borad question that your notes revolve around

Example

You can just use biology, cells, mitosis, etc. as your topic. This does not require it to be too specific as long as you get a premise of what your notes entail.

Example

How does cell reproduction work? "Mitosis is a process that creates a nearly exact copy of the original cell. Somatic cells, which include nearly all human cells, are created by this process. Meiosis is a different form of reproduction that leads to the production of germ cells, or sex cells. All cells fall into one of these two categories, which we will discuss in depth in the coming SparkNotes on Cell Reproduction. Some organisms, such as bacteria and single-celled organisms, use only mitosis for cell reproduction."

Example

In which phase does the cell duplicate? Do all cells go through the same repoduction cyclle? All of these questions work. A tip is to pretend you are the teacher making an exam. Otherwise, you can list down real knowledge gaps you have.

Example

In which phase does the cell duplicate? Do all cells go through the same repoduction cyclle? All of these questions work. A tip is to pretend you are the teacher making an exam. Otherwise, you can list down real knowledge gaps you have.

Do you have an idea?

With Genially templates, you can include visual resources to leave your audience speechless. You can also emphasize a specific phrase or fact that will be etched in the memory of your audience, and even embed external content that surprises: videos, photos, audios... Whatever you want!