In virtually every secondary or postsecondary content area classroom, students will be engaged in some form of notetaking. Certain students will jot lists, others will employ traditional outlines, and still others will use formal notetaking systems. Yet a sizable percentage of the general student population, and particularly students at risk, do not have systematic, self-directed approaches to tackling the demands of the traditional content field lecture. Such deficits are important for both the instructor and the learners be- cause transcribing, organizing, and retrieving information presented in course lectures influence the academic success of all high school and college students.

This article presents a four-stage instructional sequence of modeling, practicing, evaluating, and rein- forcing activities for developing student-directed notetaking strategies. Although each stage is described in detail, we pay particular attention to evaluating and reinforcing. This emphasis allows the introduction of NOTES (the Notetaking Observation, Training, and Evaluation Scales), a unique system for fostering students' notetaking abilities.