1. Provide yourself with an envelope of small cards or pieces of note paper. Label each with the subject of the lesson and the date of its preparation. These envelopes should be always at hand during your study and preparation. They should be preserved and filed from day to day.
  2. Read the lesson assigned for the day in the textbook, including all notes and fine print.
  3. Write on a sheet of note paper all the unfamiliar words, allusions, or expressions. Later, look these up in the dictionary or other reference.
  4. Record the dates which you think worthy to be remembered.
  5. Discover and make a note of all the apparent contradictions, inconsistencies, or inaccuracies in the author's statements.
  6. Use the map for all the places mentioned in the lesson. Be able to locate them when you come to class.
  7. In nearly every text there is a list of books for library use, given at the beginning or end of each chapter. Make yourself familiar with this bibliography.
  8. Read the special questions assigned for the day by the teacher.
  9. Go to the library. If the book for which you are in search is not to be found, try another.
  10. Learn to use an index. If the topic for which you are looking does not appear in the index, try looking for the same thing under another name; or under some related topic.
  11. Having found the material in one book, use more than one if your time permits. When you feel that you have secured the material which will make a complete answer to the question, write the answer on one of your cards for keeping notes.
  12. Remember that the teacher will ask constantly what was done, when was it done, and, most important of all, why it was done. Make a list of the questions which you think most likely to be asked on the lesson and ascertain whether you can answer them without the use of your notes or text.
  13. If possible practice your answers aloud. It will make you the more ready when called on in class.
  14. Keep a list of things which are not clear to you and about which you wish to ask questions.
  15. Before completing your preparation, read over these instructions and be sure that you have complied with them.

It may be claimed that no high school student can be expected to follow such instructions and that to secure such a daily preparation is impossible; in answer to which it must be admitted that merely a perfunctory talk on methods of preparation will accomplish little. If the instruction just suggested is to bear fruit, the teacher must take pains to see that it is followed. Carefully to prepare his lesson according to a definite plan must become a habit with the student. Facility, accuracy, and thoroughness are impossible otherwise. Haphazard methods are wasteful of time and unproductive of results. The teacher can afford to emphasize method during the first few weeks of the course. The time thus spent in assisting the pupil to develop definite habits of study will pay rich dividends for the remainder of the student's life. Daily inquiry as to the method of study pursued, frequent examination of the student's notes, questions on the important dates selected, the books used for preparation, new words discovered, and so on, will keep the importance of the plan before the class and do much to foster the habit of systematic preparation.

The question of note-taking

On the question of notebook work, there will always be a considerable difference of opinion. It is much easier to state what notebook work should not be than to outline precisely how it should be conducted. Certainly it should not be overdone. It should not be an exercise usurping time disproportionate to its value. It should not be required primarily for exhibition purposes, although such notes as are kept should be kept neatly and spelled correctly.

Students should be encouraged to keep their envelope of note paper always at hand during recitation and while reading. The habit of jotting down facts, opinions, statistics, comparisons, and contradictions while they are being read is most desirable and worthy of cultivation. The student should be taught the wisdom of keeping his notes in a neat, legible, and easily available form. Shorthand methods should be discouraged. With a little tactful direction early in the year, the student may be led to form a most useful habit. The greater the proportion of intelligent note-taking that is done without compulsion, the better. No more notes should be required than the teacher can honestly look over, correct, and grade. It is better to require no notes at all than to accept careless, superficial inaccuracies as honest work. One curse of high school history teaching is the tendency of young teachers trained in college history classes to assign more work than the student can honestly do or the teacher properly correct.

As has already been intimated, history notes should not be kept in a book. The required notes should be kept on separate sheets of paper. The topics should be clearly indicated at the top of each sheet. The authorities used in arriving at the answer should always be given, with the volume, chapter, and page. The notes on related topics should be put into an envelope and properly labeled. After the recitation the student can make any necessary corrections in his notes without spoiling their appearance. He will simply substitute a new sheet for the old. If the teacher discovers in his periodic examination of the notes that some of the matter asked for has not been properly covered or that errors have not been corrected, the notes needing revision can be detained for use in a conference with the student, while the others are returned. If at any time after completing his high school work the student desires to use the data contained in his notes or to add to them matter which he may later read, they are in available form. For convenience and neatness, for present use, and future reference this device is far superior to the formal notebook. It has the further advantage of accustoming the student to the method of note-taking which will be required of those who go to college.

It would save much valuable time, at present frequently wasted in writing useless notes, if the teacher constantly squared his notebook requirements with questions such as these:—

  1. Is the notebook work as I am conducting it calculated to develop the habit of critical reading?
  2. Does the time spent in writing up notes justify itself by fixing in the child's mind new and really relevant information not given in the text?
  3. Is it teaching students to combine facts, opinions, and statistics, to form conclusions really their own?
  4. Is the amount of work required reasonable when it is remembered that the child has three other subjects to prepare, that he is from thirteen to eighteen years of age, and more or less unfamiliar with a library?
  5. Am I able carefully and punctually to correct all the notes required?

Whatever the method the teacher thinks best to be used should be explained early in the course and thereafter the student should be held scrupulously responsible for such requirements as are made.