Quotes, Notes, and Genius!
Somewhere along the line in my teaching career (lo these near twenty years) I picked up a trick called “Quotes, Notes, and Thoughts.” Sometimes it’s called “Quotes, Notes, and Queries” or “Quotes, Notes, and Comments,” but it’s always the same idea:
- Students divide their paper into three columns—use their spiral notebooks for this so the pages can’t fall out accidentally.
- Students will use the first column for taking quotes out of the book they must read (they can use an ellipses in long ones if the must but you’ll see why that can be counterproductive).
- Students must put the page number under their quotes.
- Students then write—in the notes column—what the quote is about.
- Students then write (and this is the important part) their reaction to the quotation.
Here’s how to use it and why it works.
| Quotes | Notes | Thoughts |
|---|---|---|
| Victor said, “Lo… endeth.” (47) | In this scene Victor Frankenstein is refusing to understand the obvious and is creating a sense of dramatic irony. | I hate Victor. He’s such a putz. If he does this one more time I’m going to throw the book out the window of the bus. |
This is good for the kiddies to do for a few reasons:
- Let’s say you require your students to take, say, five QNTs every time they have reading homework:
- If at the start of each class you walk around and stamp their notebooks on their last QNT, you’ll have a record of whether they did their homework on time.
- If they are good about doing this as they read, then when it’s time to write an essay, they’ll have a book full of useful quotations they can pull from—plus they’ll have a record of what interested them in the book (in case you let them pick a topic). This is where complete quotes becomes an important boon.
- This is the kicker: the last column is the most important. By requiring them to write down their reaction (often an emotional one) you are locking the information into their brains. They make a personal connection with the text, they remember the text better, and they’re better able to write about it.
My Quotes column instructions were usually to “take quotes on passages you love, hate, or think might be important but you’re not sure why.” That turned out to be important too, as my students often picked up on important elements but couldn’t always explain why they were important. Thus the Notes column also became a place for them to write, “I think this is Dramatic Irony but I’m not sure.” That way you can track their thinking process and help them see how their line of thought derailed (see post on the importance of making mistakes)—if it derailed.
The process is easy and ultimately it saves everyone time. My students resisted it for about two days—or until their first book quiz. They always remembered more with less stress after doing QNTs.