The objective of this study was to investigate the effects of explicit instruction in notetaking skills on the notetaking performance of seventh‐grade students at different reading ability levels. The students in the notetaking instruction condition (NTI) received classroom‐based notetaking skills instruction (approximately 40 minutes) every week for 10 weeks. The comparison condition students (CNT) were asked to use conventional notetaking (CNT) that was embedded within the daily social studies lessons. The participants’ reading comprehension abilities were identified through the Sentence Verification Technique, which consisted of a 16‐item expository text. A notetaking performance test (NTPT) was used to assess the effect of notetaking skills instruction on two dimensions of the participants’ notes (verbatim copying and terse value). The results demonstrated that the terse value of students’ notes in the NTI condition was significantly better than that of the students in the CNT condition. The students in the NTI condition reduced their percentage of verbatim copying and used fewer words to cover more main concepts in the NTPT that followed the instructional intervention. Surprisingly, the students at low reading ability showed the greatest gains in notetaking performance from verbatim copying to terse notetaking.