Practice of a concept or skill begins with efficient note taking – an important academic skill students, particularly at the middle and high schools levels, need to develop to have higher achievement in mathematics. It includes how to take notes during teacher and student presentations and then how to summarize work and learning. Through note taking, the information transfers from the teacher to the student and from the student to the teacher. Because the development of note taking skills cannot be left to chance, the teacher has to teach these skills explicitly. Practice allows students to achieve automaticity of basic skills—the fast, accurate, and effortless processing of content information—which frees the working memory for more complex and higher order thinking and fosters the development of creative aspects of problem solving. With automaticity with understanding, the transfer—the ability to use skills learned in solving one class of problems to solving other problems—a vital pa...