How to take Cornell notes, with a worked example

How to set up the page

Divide the page into three areas before the lesson starts.

• A wide column on the right, about two thirds of the page. This is for your notes during class.
• A narrow column on the left. This is for cues: questions and key words you add afterwards.
• A strip across the bottom, a few lines tall. This is for a short summary of the page.

Write the subject, the topic and the date at the top. It sounds minor, but it is what lets you find the page again in week nine.

During class: the notes column

Write in the wide column only. Use short phrases, not full sentences, and leave a blank line between ideas. Do not try to copy the teacher word for word. Write the main point, the reason for it, and one example.

If you miss something, leave a gap and keep going. You can fill it in after class from a friend or the textbook.

After class: the cue column

This is the step most people skip, and it is the one that makes the method work. Within a day of the lesson, read your notes and write a question or key word in the left column beside each idea.

A good cue is a question your notes answer. If your notes say that photosynthesis happens in the chloroplasts and needs light, water and carbon dioxide, the cue is "Where does photosynthesis happen and what does it need?"

The summary

In the strip at the bottom, write two or three sentences that sum up the page in your own words. If you cannot do it, that tells you something useful: you have not understood the page yet, and you know exactly which page to go back to.

A worked example

Say the lesson is on the causes of the First World War. The notes column might read:

• Alliances: Triple Entente (Britain, France, Russia) against Triple Alliance (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy).
• Militarism: naval race between Britain and Germany.
• Trigger: assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, June 1914.

The cue column beside them would read: "Which countries were in each alliance?", "What was the naval race?" and "What event triggered the war?" The summary would be one or two sentences saying that a system of alliances and an arms race turned one assassination into a continental war.

How to study from Cornell notes

Cover the notes column with a sheet of paper so only the cues show. Answer each cue out loud or on scrap paper, then uncover the notes and check. Mark the ones you got wrong and come back to those first next time.

That is the whole point of the layout. The cue column turns a page of notes into a page of questions, and answering questions from memory is a far better use of study time than reading the page again.

Doing the same thing in Grasp

If you keep your notes in Grasp, the quiz feature does the cue-column step for you: pick the notes you want to be tested on and it writes questions from them and marks your answers. The habit is the same either way. Take the notes, turn them into questions, and answer the questions from memory.