Cornell notes, laid out for you

What is the Cornell note taking method?

The Cornell method is a way of laying out a page so that taking notes, reviewing them and testing yourself all happen on the same sheet. It was developed by Walter Pauk, an education professor at Cornell University, and described in his book How to Study in College.

The page has three parts. The large notes column on the right is for what you hear or read in class. The cue column on the left is for questions, keywords and prompts you add afterwards. The summary box at the bottom is where you sum up the whole page in a few sentences of your own.

How do I take Cornell notes step by step?

Reviewing with the cues covered turns a page of notes into a ready made quiz, which is the point of the layout.

1. Before class, write the subject, date and topic in the header.
2. During class, write notes in the right column. Use short phrases, abbreviations and simple diagrams, and skip a line between ideas.
3. Soon after class, read your notes and write questions or keywords in the cue column next to each idea. A good cue is a question the notes answer.
4. Write a summary of two to four sentences in the box at the bottom, in your own words.
5. To review, cover the notes column, read each cue and try to answer it out loud. Then uncover and check.

What size should the cue column and summary box be?

The classic layout uses a cue column about 2.5 inches (63 mm) wide and a summary area about 2 inches (51 mm) tall, and those are the defaults here. They suit most subjects.

Change them to fit how you work. A narrow cue column leaves more room for notes in fast lectures. A wide cue column suits language learning, where you might write vocabulary on the left and examples on the right. A tall summary box helps when a teacher asks for longer reflections, and a short one gives the notes more lines.

Should I use lined, grid or blank Cornell paper?

You can also leave the cue column unlined so you have space for larger questions, symbols or small drawings.

• College ruled: the best fit for most high school and university notes.
• Wide ruled: younger students and anyone with larger handwriting.
• Narrow ruled: dense lecture notes where every line counts.
• 5 mm grid: maths, physics and chemistry, where you need equations, tables and graphs to line up.
• Blank: biology diagrams, art history sketches and mind maps inside the notes column.

What does a good Cornell notes example look like?

Here is a short example for a lesson on the water cycle. In the notes column: evaporation, sun heats water, vapour rises; condensation, vapour cools into clouds; precipitation, rain, snow, hail; collection, rivers, lakes, oceans, groundwater.

In the cue column, next to each idea: What makes water evaporate? How do clouds form? Name three kinds of precipitation. Where does water collect?

In the summary box: Water moves in a loop. The sun turns it into vapour, the vapour cools into clouds, it falls as precipitation and collects before the cycle starts again. Notice that the cues are questions and the summary uses full sentences.

How can teachers use a Cornell notes template in class?

Type the lesson topic in the subject field and print a class set with Pages to print, so every student starts with the same heading. Some teachers fill the cue column with guiding questions before class and ask students to find the answers during the lesson. Others collect only the summary boxes as a quick exit check to see what landed.

Because your settings live in the page link, you can copy the link into your lesson plan and reprint the same template next term.

How do I print the template so it fits my binder?

Choose A4 or US Letter to match your paper and print at 100% or Actual size. If the pages go into a ring binder, choose Extra on the left for hole punching so the holes land in blank space, not in your cue column. Save the result as a PDF to keep a copy you can print any time, or to write on with a tablet and stylus.