How to make a study guide (with a one-page template that tests you back)

A study guide is for retrieving, not storing. Make one page per unit, with every idea written as a question on the left and the answer, a worked step or a diagram on the right, so you can cover the right column and test yourself. Build it from the course outline, not from your notes, and leave out anything you could look up in ten seconds. Then study the guide by covering, answering and marking, never by rereading it.

What a study guide is for (and what it is not)

Most study guides are storage. The student condenses forty pages of notes into six, in neater handwriting, with headings in colour. It is real effort and it feels like studying. What it produces is a shorter thing to reread, and rereading is the technique the research rates lowest (Dunlosky et al. 2013). Summarizing was rated low utility too, for students who had not been trained in it, and most have not.

A guide written as questions is a different object. It is a test you own. Recalling an answer is what makes memory last. Students who took a test on a passage remembered more of it a week later than students who spent the same time studying the passage again (Roediger & Karpicke 2006). Students who practised retrieval learned more from a science text than students who spent the time building a concept map with the text open (Karpicke & Blunt 2011). Why answering beats rereading has the full case.

So the rule for the page: making the guide helps a little; answering it helps a lot. Build it fast, and spend the hours on the answering.

Step 1: Start from the outline, not the notes

Your notes are in the order the class happened, tangents included. The course outline, the textbook's section headings or the course's own list of ideas are in the order the subject is built, with nothing extra. Start there. Write one line per idea, in that order. Twelve to twenty ideas is a unit. If the teacher gave a weighting (the test is 40 % limits and 60 % derivatives), write it beside the heading, so the guide's effort matches the test's.

Then, and only then, open your notes to fill in the answers.

Step 2: The one-page structure (the template)

Three columns. The left is the question, the middle is the answer, the right is the date you last got it right.

Question (the idea, as a teacher would ask it)	Answer, step or diagram (short)	Date last right
What is …?	A one-sentence definition.
How do you … when …?	A one-line worked step, or the set-up equation with its symbols named.
Why does … change when …?	The one-line reason, or a sketch.

Twelve to twenty rows per unit, one page. The middle column is kept short on purpose: a definition, a formula with its symbols named, a sketch you can redraw. If an answer runs to a paragraph, it is two rows, or it does not belong on the guide. The date column is the part most study guide templates leave out, and it is the part that turns the guide into a schedule (Step 4).

Copy the table into a notebook or a document. One page per unit. The template is the same for every subject; only the question shapes change.

Step 3: Turn every line into a question

Three shapes of question carry almost everything a school test asks.

1. Definition. "What is a limit?" "What is a strong acid?" The answer is one sentence. For a term you must also recognize from its definition, make the reverse card too, the way reverse cards for definitions describes it.
2. Procedure. "How do you evaluate a limit when direct substitution gives 0/0?" The answer is a one-line step, or the first line of the set-up. Not the whole solution: the guide points at the method, and the practice problems do the rest.
3. Connection. "Why does the limit exist here when the function is not defined at the point?" The answer is a reason in one line. These are the questions that separate a level 3 answer from a level 4, and the ones most guides leave out.

What makes a bad line: a heading with no question under it ("Limits"); a slide copied across ("Limits: an introduction"); a formula with no words beside it, which you will recognize and not be able to use. Each of those can be turned into a question in a minute, and the minute is the studying.

Step 4: Study the guide by covering, not reading

Cover the right two columns with a sheet of paper. Read the question. Say the answer aloud, or write it on scrap. Uncover. Mark yourself honestly: right means right, not "close". If it was right, write today's date in the third column.

On the next day, answer only the rows that do not yet have two dates. The rows you got right twice, on two different days, are done for now; the rest get another pass. The dates and the gaps are what the research on spacing says moves marks: the same material spread over days is remembered longer than the same material in one sitting (Cepeda et al. 2006), and the date column is the cheapest way to make the spacing happen without a separate plan.

The guide is finished when every row carries two dates. Not when it is written. Chapter 1 of the free playbook is this rule, answer first, with the honesty check for marking yourself.

The mistakes that make a guide useless

• Copying the slides. The slides are the teacher's guide, written for the teacher to talk over. Yours has to be in questions you can fail.
• Rewriting the textbook in colour. Neater is not shorter, and shorter is not a question.
• Making it longer than two pages. Past two pages it is a second textbook, and you will reread it.
• Including facts you could look up in ten seconds. A value from a data sheet you will be handed on the test does not belong on the page; the method for using it does.
• Making it the night before. A guide built in one evening is a condensing job. A guide that gains three rows after every class is a test that has been growing for a month, and by the exam it already carries dates. The night before still has its uses, and this is not one of them.

Worked example: a one-page guide for the limits unit

Here are eight rows of a guide for the start of MCV4U: limits of functions, the limit laws and evaluating limits by factoring and rationalising, and continuity (ideas 2 to 4 of the course path). The dates show the covering routine two days in.

Question	Answer	Date last right
What does lim x→a f(x) = L mean, in one sentence?	As x gets close to a from both sides, f(x) gets close to L; f(a) itself need not exist.	Nov 3, Nov 5
When does direct substitution fail, and what are the two fixes?	When it gives 0/0. Factor and cancel, or rationalise a root by multiplying by the conjugate.	Nov 3, Nov 5
How do you evaluate lim x→3 (x^2 − 9)/(x − 3)?	Factor: (x − 3)(x + 3)/(x − 3) → x + 3 → 3 + 3 = 6.	Nov 3
How do you evaluate lim x→0 (√(x + 4) − 2)/x?	Multiply top and bottom by (√(x + 4) + 2): the top becomes (x + 4) − 4 = x; cancel the x → 1/(√(x + 4) + 2) → 1/(2 + 2) = 1/4.	Nov 5
What is the limit of a sum, and when may you use the rule?	The sum of the limits, when both limits exist.	Nov 3, Nov 5
What three things make f continuous at x = a?	f(a) exists; lim x→a f(x) exists; the two are equal.	Nov 5
Why can a function have a limit at a point where it is not defined?	The limit is about the values near a, not at a: (x^2 − 9)/(x − 3) is not defined at 3, and its limit there is 6.
How do you tell a removable discontinuity from a jump?	Removable: the one-sided limits agree and f(a) is missing or different. Jump: the one-sided limits differ.	Nov 3

Check the two numbers. For the first, substituting 3 gives 9 − 9 over 3 − 3, which is 0/0, so factor: x^2 − 9 = (x − 3)(x + 3). Cancel the (x − 3), and x + 3 at x = 3 is 6. For the second, (√(x + 4) − 2)(√(x + 4) + 2) = (x + 4) − 4 = x, which cancels the x underneath and leaves 1/(√(x + 4) + 2). At x = 0 that is 1/(√4 + 2) = 1/(2 + 2) = 1/4.

The routine on these rows: on Nov 3 five rows were right and three were not. On Nov 5 only the rows without two dates were asked. Three earned their second date, the rationalising row and the continuity row got their first, and the "why" row is still blank and will be asked again tomorrow. The guide is done when the last column is full.

Study guides for maths, biology and chemistry

A math study guide is mostly procedure rows: "How do you …?" with the first line of the working as the answer, and the rest left for practice. One worked step is enough; the full method of redoing problems cold is in the maths page.

A biology study guide is terms and "draw the …" prompts. The answer to "Draw glycolysis in one line of arrows" is the arrows, and you mark yourself against the textbook's diagram. The two-pass method is in the biology and chemistry page.

A chemistry study guide splits in two. The calculation chapters are procedure rows with the set-up equation as the answer (pH = −log[H+]; the first thing you need is [H+]). The naming and theory chapters are definition rows, so treat them like biology.

What a study guide maker should do (and what to check)

A study guide maker, creator or generator is useful if it saves the typing and builds the right object. The checks are the same for any of them. It should write from your own material, not from a generic summary of the topic. It should phrase ideas as questions. It should show where each line came from, so you can check a line against your notes. It should let you edit, because a few lines will be wrong or in the wrong words. And it should export, so the guide is yours and not the tool's.

If what comes out is a prettier summary to reread, it has built the wrong thing, however good it looks. Check three or four lines against your notes before you trust the rest, and study it exactly as you would a guide you wrote: covering and answering, not reading. Generated notes and what to do with them within a day covers the same rule for notes a tool makes.

Summary

The four steps: start from the outline, not the notes; one page of three columns (question, short answer, date last right); every line a question; study it by covering, answering and dating. The three question shapes: definition (what is …), procedure (how do you … when …), connection (why does … change when …).