Reading about history is both exciting and educational in both ways. Everyone in their academic sessions, study history with a lot of interest and excitement. However, when we start to get in the depths of any historical topic, it becomes quite frustrating over the course of time.

Especially, when you are tasked with university assignments, it becomes even more difficult to keep tracking of your history syllabus. However, this is where students starts to write notes thoroughly from each history book they read throughout their course.

Though Due to this, many students have been able to maximize their productivity from their notes & journals as well. Nevertheless if we look at newcomers, it becomes clear that taking notes for history for the first time, is not a simple task. In fact, in a topic as complicated as history, it is perhaps the most daunting task of all.

So, when taking notes from a History Textbook, you have to consider below things, like;

#) Important Times & Dates

#) Important Events, Names

#) Highlight Important areas etc.

However, if you came here to look for a solution on how to take Good History notes, then you are at the perfect article. Keep on reading to have a better idea on how you can turn this daunting task into a more achievable as well as a more fun and effective task.

How to take History Notes from a Textbook?

#) Take Notes of Important Dates

History is all about dates, therefore you will be playing with dates most of the time when you are studying history. The best way to cover almost half of your subject is to take notes of important dates with its relevant events and moments.

This way, you can mind map a simple thing in mind that can help you associate an entire historical event with a date.

#) Note Important Names, Places and Incidents

This might come as a co factor of taking notes of important dates, but it is equally important as well. When we note down the dates and incidents, it serves as the basic foundation of what we have covered in a chapter.

However, when we want to take a glance at the depths of the topic, then that particular date and event is simply not enough. There were a lot of stuff happened around those dates and events and hence it becomes a daunting task to remember those just by dates.

Therefore, associate those dates with important people and incidents. Identify those names who were behind the scenes. Also there are other people who worked behind as an Influencer. So, try to linkup those important name’s with dates.

Furthermore, the incidents can serve as the foundation of several events throughout important historical dates. Not only that, but it can also give a deep look at what actually caused the overall event.

Because it is not necessary that everything was caused by a person and can easily be a result of subsequent incidents.

Combining the notes of these two factors can easily game up your history preparation and it is like almost 70 percent of your work done. So make sure to take notes of these mentioned factors the most through each subject.

 

#) Bookmark Important Areas

It is almost an impossible task to imagine studying history without bookmarking important areas of the subject. When we talk about history, bookmarking becomes a crucial part in making sure you are doing well with your subjects.

Most of the times a simple glance at these bookmarks is enough to help you remember minor or even major events. These bookmarks don’t have to be overly fancy or decorative, you can simply make them out of blank material by yourself.

It is all about adding more and more convenience to what you have been studying through the course of your subject.

Another benefitting factor of bookmarking is that it gives more value to your subjects. Not to mention specially during exam days, these quick glances will help you cover the majority of the subject with ease.

Therefore, start bookmarking your subjects as much as possible to add more convenience to your studies.

#) Revise Your Own Notes

Yes, history is a very vast subject of consideration that gets uncontrollably long over the course of time. Not to mention that each of the chapters is full of events and moments that takes days to cover in the start. Therefore, it is clear that reading all those chapters again and again for the revision will be taking a lot of time as well as effort.

Therefore, you should proceed with a personalized way that covers each and every important event of the chapters. This way you will have a better idea of what was covered in the chapter as well as what to expect from the upcoming chapters.

Either way, it is always better to take the notes prior to starting revision for more ease of work.

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#) Highlighting Important Points

Whether as an alternative or a co-factor of adding more convenience to your studies, you can use highlighting important areas. It is clear that bookmarking might help you a lot in the quick effort, but when you are actually reading, things become complicated.

This is where the important points you have highlighted will be very helpful for you.

Highlighting important areas is not a difficult task at all and anyone can do with ease. Furthermore, the best part about this is that it will give you a clear path of what passage or paras you should be reading and what to avoid.

Now, here’s a real question, which color code is best to highlight history notes?

So, If you are highlighting key information, you should use different colors than the particular ones.

Blue is a popular color in marketing materials. In addition, blue makes it easy to differentiate from the rest of the text. Also we recommend to use this Color for highlighting.

Here are also some other suggestions for highlighting information:

#) Green – highlight the most important parts of the Notes.

#) Purple – to highlight long phrases and lists of multiple items

#) Light purple – highlight the most important Names, Dates.

#) Red – Use to highlight information that you think is most important

Choose the method that works best for you. Because the key here is to find a color that stands out from the text, but does not distract from the text.

This becomes extremely helpful near the times of exams when you are short and limited on time. Therefore, grab a highlighter and highlight each of the important areas you go throughout your course.

#) Conclusion

Studying history is sure a fun task in your academics but challenging as well. However, the challenging factor can be resolved easily when you follow important guidelines to add more value to your studies.

This article has provided all those guidelines to help you find out how to take notes from a textbook like History. These tips are used by the UPSC toppers to stay ahead of everyone with their studies.

Not only that, but even after studies, these methods are going to serve your knowledge as well as experience for a long period for sure.