When I was a student, taking notes was one of my favorite parts of school—I loved writing everything down, organizing information, even color-coding with different color pens. So when I first became a teacher, and another colleague first showed me a set of fill-in-the-blank guided notes, my honest reaction (which I kept to myself) was that it was the most ridiculous thing I have ever seen. These are high school students, fill-in-the-blank? I remember thinking. Why can’t students just take notes?
In my first few weeks of teaching, I built a new slide presentation every night for the next day’s lesson. Students had laptops open in front of them, so I just assumed they had word documents open and were typing up notes, problem solved. A few weeks in, the same teacher asked me a simple question: were my students actually taking notes, or did they just have their laptops open? I told him they had their computers out and they seemed to be taking notes. He suggested I check.
The next day, I specifically reminded them that they were to be taking notes during the presentation. When the presentation was over, I gave them five minutes to upload their notes from the day to canvas. In my first period class of 29 students, 3 submitted their notes.
At the end of class, a student came up to me and seemed genuinely upset “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t upload anything. I just don’t really know how to take notes… Also, you talk really fast.”
That conversation has stuck with me ever since. I had never seriously considered that a high school student might simply not know how to take notes — not because they weren’t capable, but because no one had ever taught them. Some have had teachers who taught note-taking explicitly. Many have not. Note-taking, it turns out, is a skill like any other: it has to be taught, practiced, and supported, not assumed.
That single conversation is the reason guided notes exist in my classroom at all.
From digital notes to paper, and from one format to several
I started building fill-in-the-blank guided notes for nearly every standard I taught across Civics, Government, Economics, and Personal Finance — a significant undertaking, especially without a textbook to lean on. After a semester of assigning notes digitally, and growing tired of watching students stare at screens all day, I converted everything to a printer-friendly format. Students noticed immediately, and more than one told me how much they liked my class because it was the only class where they actually needed a pencil. Students for the most part were engaged and participating in way they had not before the guided notes.
Then I began noticing a new pattern. Due to time constraints I had been using the same notes with both honors and standard students, but whereas the standard level classes were remaining engaged, the honors students were all over the place, but mostly checking out. The structure that helped some students focus was, for others, removing the very thing that kept them thinking — the need to process and organize information themselves.
That observation led me to build a second format: Cornell-style (also called split page) notes, designed for students who write faster, and need less scaffolding and more room to synthesize information in their own words. The first time my honors students saw the Cornell-style packet, the reaction was far from enthusiasm—in fact it bordered on mutiny. There was real resistance, and more than a few students were convinced there was no way they could keep up. I promised them that if they gave it a try and did not like it more by the end of unit 1, we would go back to fill-in-the-blank. But I also reminded them that most of them were planning on going to college, and most college professors do not provide fill-in-the-blank notes–so it would be good practice.
It was a struggle at first but within a couple of weeks 95% of them were doing fine. I generally wait until roughly two-thirds of the class has finished writing before moving on, and made the slides available after class for students to complete the the sections they missed. A couple of students genuinely struggled, mostly due to writing ability, so I still offered the fill-in-the-blank format as an alternative to those students who truly needed it. And it is extremely important to have that option, as in my experience it often makes the difference between a student staying engaged and a student quietly disengaging for the rest of the period.
Over time, this is the conclusion I’ve landed on: there is no single best note-taking format. Some students do best with heavy scaffolding. Others need the open structure of Cornell notes to stay mentally active. Most students fall somewhere in between, and the goal isn’t to find the one system that works for everyone — it’s to match the right level of support to the student in front of you.
This is also the reason every lesson I create now includes both formats — fill-in-the-blank notes for students who need structure, and Cornell-style notes for students ready for more independence — rather than a single one-size-fits-all version. Every class is different but as a general rule I believe anything honors and AP should start out with Cornell notes and make adjustments from there.
Why I still believe in handwriting, when possible
One belief I’ve held onto throughout this whole process: when it’s feasible, I’d rather see students writing their notes by hand than typing them.
This isn’t just personal preference. A growing body of research backs it up. Mueller and Oppenheimer’s well-known 2014 study found that students taking longhand notes outperformed laptop note-takers on conceptual questions, likely because typing tends to produce verbatim transcription, while handwriting forces students to process and rephrase information as they go. More recent neuroscience research, including a 2024 study out of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, found that handwriting activates significantly more widespread brain connectivity than typing — particularly in regions tied to memory and learning.
Not every researcher agrees on what this means. Some critics have pointed out that more brain activity isn’t necessarily the same thing as better learning, and a few studies using tablets or stylus-based devices have found smaller gaps between handwriting and typing than the laptop-based studies originally suggested. The honest summary is that the evidence leans fairly consistently toward handwriting, but it isn’t unanimous. It’s also worth mentioning that unless a classroom has the ability to control student devices and lock screens to a single tab, most students are realistically doing at least a few other things alongside taking notes.
5 Things Teachers Should Know about Guided Notes
After years of building, revising, and watching what actually works in the room, here’s what I’d want a newer teacher — or really, anyone designing instructional materials — to know about guided notes:
- Don’t assume students already know how to take notes. Many students have never been taught how — guided notes give them the structure to start building that skill.
- Different students need different levels of support. Some thrive with fill-in-the-blank notes; others are ready for the independence of Cornell-style notes. The goal isn’t one format for everyone — it’s matching the right level of support to the student. Though there are individual exceptions, as a general rule, honors and AP students should not be using fill-in-the-blank notes IMO.
- Paper still has real value. Even in a digital classroom, printed notes reduce distractions and, when possible, give students the cognitive benefits that come with handwriting rather than typing. Most students genuinely enjoy the break from their devices.
- Guided notes are a scaffold, not the goal. The purpose isn’t filling in blanks — it’s helping students learn to identify key ideas and organize information, skills they’ll eventually use independently.
- Collect them, grade them, and give feedback. Notes that are never checked quickly become notes that are never taken seriously. Collecting guided notes for a grade — and giving real feedback even if it is very brief — reinforces that note-taking is a skill worth doing well, not just a box to check.
None of this came from a textbook or a single professional development session — it came from paying attention to what was actually happening in my own classroom, semester after semester, and being willing to change course when something wasn’t working–or could be better. Guided notes aren’t a shortcut, and they’re not a crutch either. Done well, they’re a teaching tool in their own right, one that meets students where they are and gives them a path toward note-taking they can eventually do on their own. Somewhat ironically, the teacher who once thought guided notes were ridiculous now spends a good part of her infinite spare time revising them.
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