Taking Note by Brenda Miller Power writes that any teacher who wants to learn more about their students, whether they teach kindergarten or high school math, can gain insight into their own teaching and the needs of the individuals in their classroom through observational notetaking.

Power describes how notetaking will be different for individual teachers depending on what they are looking to get out of it. She acknowledges that an elementary teacher will look for developmental growth in areas that a middle school teacher wonít need to. She writes that for anecdotal notes to be successful they need to become part of a teacherís daily routine. Most importantly, the teacher who gives himself or herself permission to be candid about their comments will produce compelling insights to the learning that is happening within the classroom.

Any teacher who knows that they cannot remember everything of importance that happens in the classroom day after day should read this book and try taking anecdotal notes. It gives teachers more of a sense of what individual students are doing rather then the class as a whole. It reveals students who are slipping through unnoticed so that they can be brought back into the class community. There is no formula for taking notes, no right way to do it, you just have to dive in and try one way and then change it to suit your needs as a teacher.

"Give yourself permission to write the most inconsequential garbage in the world. Youíre trying to see students in new ways, and that requires really being open to what youíre seeing around you." (37)

"Work to eliminate prefab judgments in your notes. By prefab judgments, I mean those insights in your notes that are based not upon what youíre seeing but upon your preconceptions of what your classroom is like and how learning occurs in it." (41)