Making Jot Notes

A jot note is a word or a phrase that you write down to help you remember an important point that you have read or learned. NEVER copy whole sentences or paragraphs - that's plagiarizing!

When you have found a book or information source that you want to use, start making Jot Notes. In our example topic on Earthquakes, while considering the question, we have already decided on four categories. We have assigned a colour to each category to help organize our notes.

1. Describe how a seismograph works and how it is made. [blue]
2. Discuss how the intensity of earthquakes is measured and what scales are used for these measurements. [red]
3. Design a seismograph, make a list of requirements and construct your own seismograph. [green]
4. Include additional information of interest about earthquakes. [orange]

There are many ways to make jot notes. Here's a few:

• Use a page ruled into boxes and colour a corner of each box according to its category. Try this example (you can print this page, or your teacher may have a copy for you). Later, you can cut out the boxes and sort them according to the colour categories.
• Write each jot note on a small piece of paper, card or sticky note. (Remember to colour code.)
• If you have a print-out that you are allowed to mark, you may wish to use coloured highlighters.

Try this Earthquake exercise (this ONLY works on school computers) to sort words into categories using Smart Ideas software. (Download and save the file, then open it in Smart Ideas.) Of course your research notes will be much more detailed.

Click here to see an example of the research process from making jot notes to the final product.