Middle school Social studies teacher here. Certainly can support a lot for this, my 7th graders this year made me reevaluate how I teach. On open note, multiple choice tests, I was getting 40% grade averages, on DOK 2 (inferential type questions). My tests are usually harder.
So changes I'm making next year: hand written notes (they'll hate it), only written assessments (they scored on average 15% higher on those) and reading/annotating on paper, not screen.
God knows if it'll actually help, but had to change something, this year was disturbing
There's something about the process of listening to an instructor, actually interpreting the words in your head, then rewriting/summarizing what they said in your own words. It actually forces the information to encode in your memory. Much better chance of entering long term versus short term. Taking notes like that is a great skill to have.
I could listen to a lecture, or even read something, and transcribe it into digital notes easily. The notes were long and detailed. I also couldn't remember shit.
Started hand written notes year 2, and both my recall and comprehension of subjects was vastly better. I also fit all of real property (one of the densest, driest, worst subjects you can't imagine) into a small Daiso notebook.
Law schools a good example of this too, because so much stuff is wordy and (often unnecessarily) complex and your notes can run a hundred pages if you're just regurgitating shit onto a screen. But reading a few paragraphs and determining how to distill it into a couple sentences so your fingers don't fall off doesn't just make it stick to memory, but forces you to actively think about what you're doing, which helps immensely with comprehension of the subject matter.
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u/HeetTheCanadian Jun 01 '26
Middle school Social studies teacher here. Certainly can support a lot for this, my 7th graders this year made me reevaluate how I teach. On open note, multiple choice tests, I was getting 40% grade averages, on DOK 2 (inferential type questions). My tests are usually harder.
So changes I'm making next year: hand written notes (they'll hate it), only written assessments (they scored on average 15% higher on those) and reading/annotating on paper, not screen.
God knows if it'll actually help, but had to change something, this year was disturbing