Using codes when note-taking

A system I devised for lesson observation could be adapted for other purposes

If you find yourself having to multitask in the form of observing or interviewing while making notes at the same time, it’s a good idea to use a coding system of some sort to help you get your thoughts down quickly. This is assuming, of course, that you haven’t learnt shorthand. If you have, skip this article.

Example of a coding system

When I was an Ofsted¹ inspector one of my tasks was to observe lessons². As any teacher will tell you, if all the teacher does is lecture the students, and all they do is sit passively, the pace of the lesson is pretty slow. But in a more normal kind of lesson, the situation changes on a second-by-second basis. There are interactions going on between teacher and students, and between students and students, and there are different types of interaction. For example, a student lobbing a ball of paper across the room sets up a different set of interactions from a student asking a teacher a question.

In that situation the observer is looking at, and evaluating, a range of things:

• Does the teacher have sufficient subject knowledge?

• Is class behaviour conducive to learning?

• How does the teacher deal with questions that are not on the (implied) lesson plan?

• In the absence of a printed lesson plan, is there evidence that the lesson has indeed been planned?

• etc etc

I needed a way of jotting down my observations and some tentative evaluations (for following up or cross-checking later), so I devised by own, as exemplified in the following anonymised “Evidence Form” or EF:

Evidence form - Edited, by Terry Freedman

There is little to be gained here by explaining every one of my codes, because your needs will be different from mine, but just to give you some examples:

• + means good point.

• - means not good.

• KSU means Knowledge, Skills and Understanding.

• T means teacher.

• I don’t think I’ve used this in the document depicted above, but I often use a triangle to indicate a change (from the Greek letter delta, which is used in some disciplines to denote change).

The benefits of using a coding system you’ve devised yourself

There are several advantages of using your own system of codes, apart from time-saving of course.

• You won’t have to learn someone else’s system.

• You can devise it to meet your own unique requirements.

• If necessary, you can create a system that won’t mean anything to prying eyes.

However, devising your own system does come with a number of downsides.

The disadvantages of using a coding system you’ve devised yourself

• If anything happens to you, others may not be able to decipher your notes.

• You might forget your own system if you don’t use it for a long time.

• It’s probably the case that a long tried and tested system of shorthand is, once you’ve invested the time learning it, more efficient than your own.

Concluding remarks

You might think that recording an interview, and then transcribing it using an app like Otter, would be much faster than writing everything down at the time. However, although that will help with accuracy — for example, in your notes you might write “Great quotable comment here!” — but (a) you still have to find it and (b) recording and transcription apps won’t help you remember your evaluations.

I found when I was observing lessons that I was continually forming working hypotheses, which would either be confirmed or otherwise later in the lesson, or which would form the basis for a further lesson observation or delving into assessment data subsequently. My various squiggles in my notebook or Evidence Form may not have meant much to anybody else, but it conveyed a lot of information to me.

I am not aware of any app that would have served the purpose equally well.

This is a slightly updated version I first published elsewhere in April 2021. In the last week or so Jillian Hess described how Beatrix Potter had her own cipher system for her note-taking.

1. Office for Standards in Education, the inspection body in England

2. As far as I know, lessons are no longer evaluated by Ofsted. However, this article is, I believe, still relevant because it describes a method of devising and using codes to save time.