The students' critical thinking skill in SMAN 7 Banjarmasin is relatively low refers to the students' ability in evaluating argument, giving reason to support conclusion, and making decision, which is deficient, and also the students are not accustomed to record information by noting the important points of material in learning activity. Therefore, researcher did a research to know if the guide note taking strategy in direct instruction learning model has an effect toward the students' critical thinking skill. This research is a quasi-experiment research with nonequivalent group pretest-posttest design. Data is obtained from student's worksheet and critical thinking skill test. Data is analyzed descriptive quantitatively. The research result shows that the guide note taking strategy in direct instruction learning model has an effect toward the students' critical thinking skill with the correlation of 0.97. Researchers conclude that the guide note taking learning strategy in direct instruction setting has positive effect toward the critical thinking skill of XI MIA students in SMA Negeri 7 Banjarmasin. Keywords: critical thinking skill, guide note taking