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Remembering what you read will help your schoolwork, and taking good reading notes will help you retain what you've read.

Steps:

1. Budget enough time for taking notes. The time you spend now will pay off down the line with less review time and increased retention.

2. Date your notes, and write full bibliographic information next to the date, including author, title, publication, date of publication, city, publisher, and volume number for journal articles.

3. Take notes in outline form to structure the material, and break it into related chunks and sub chunks.

4. Use the structure of the book (or article) as the structure of your notes. For instance, chapters correspond to major headings, chapter sections to subheadings.

5. Note anything that is pertinent to the author's argument; try to avoid trivial minutiae. Important points tend to come in introductory and concluding paragraphs.

6. Distinguish facts from opinions, and quotations from summaries, in a way that will make it clear which is which when you review your notes.

7. Review your reading notes the next day, and do it again a few days later. This is a time-efficient way of retaining the material.

Tips:

Consider using index cards if you're taking notes for a research paper. Be sure to list the bibliographic information on a separate, numbered card. This will make your notes much easier to organize.

One way of deciding what is relevant is to "cheat" by reading the conclusion first so that you'll know what's important as soon as you come across it in the text.

Use abbreviations in your notes. For instance, an upward-pointing arrow for "increase" and a delta for "change."

Warnings:

If you're writing down a quotation, make sure you get it exactly right.

Tips from eHow Users:

Outlines by Mary I.
I like outlines for most every class except math. Making outlines after you read is easy and helps you retain what you have read. To make an outline you have to do the following things:

#1- Read the entire assignment.
#2- After you have read the entire assignment, go back to the beginning and outline the whole chapter.
#3- To outline the whole chapter, you simply think of the main idea and have that idea be your heading. Your subheadings are what you think support the main idea, and anything in addition to the subheadings are any additional information you find relevant (and they will sometimes be the details)

Reading whatever your professor has assigned, and outlining it out prior to the class meeting, is a great way to be able to really follow a lecture to the fullest extent of your abilities. After you have read what you have been assigned to read and have outlined it, it is a good idea to make a list of main topics as well as anything you might not have understood. When you take your lecture notes, keep this list handy and it will be a good way to keep up with the lecture. You can actually cross off what your professor went over, no different than how you cross off items from a grocery list when you go shopping. Then, if there is anything left over, or if there is anything you do not understand (that you have written down on your list), you have what you need to ask your professor right there in front of you.

For math, I really think the most important way to take reading notes is to really go over the examples that are right before the problems that your professor will assign. Really go over all the examples (and everything else) as well as you can, and focus on those examples. Sit yourself down and focus on the steps that lead to the answer and write down what is hard for you and really focus on it. Then you can ask your professor about what is hard for you when they cover it in the class meeting, or you can go to the math tutoring lab, or ask a pal about it. A neat way to focus on what you are trying to learn about for math, is to read over everything a couple of times and then focus on the steps to the examples to the very best of your abilities. Then take some paper and fold it in half, on one side of the paper write down the example problems and all of the steps and everything and on the other side just write down the problem itself (with no steps). Focus on the example problems that you have written out in their entire form, and then when you feel ready, fold the paper where all you see are the problems you wrote out with no steps and write down what you have tried your best to understand. Remember, math is comprehensive, so you really have to try your best to not get behind at all.

Turn headings into questions by Tom Y.
Using the outline method, turn headings into questions. Then read and take notes that answer the question.

For example: Heading: "Our National Parks Are Being Threatened." Turn into a question and read and take notes to get the answer: "What Are National Parks? How Are They Being Threatened?"

This is a great way to review for exams. You'll find that many times these same questions appear on tests!
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