Cornell notes: the method, a filled example, and a free printable template (no email)

Cornell notes divide the page into three parts: a wide right-hand column for notes taken in class, a narrow left-hand cue column filled in afterwards with questions that the notes answer, and a summary strip at the bottom written in your own words. The method's value is the second step: covering the notes and answering the cues turns the page into a self-test. The template is below, as a table you can copy or rule onto any page in ten seconds, with a filled example from a physics lecture.

The layout

Three regions. The cue column on the left, about 6 cm wide (two and a half inches). The notes column on the right, the rest of the width. The summary strip across the bottom, about 5 cm tall (two inches). Notes go in the right column during class. Cues and summary are written afterwards, within a day.

The method comes from Walter Pauk, who taught study skills at Cornell University and published it in How to Study in College in 1962. His five R's name the steps: record (notes in class), reduce (the cues), recite (cover and answer), reflect (connect it to what you know), review (come back to it). The layout is the least of it. Notes are a container for recall, and what makes Cornell notes different from any other notes is that the cue column builds the recall in. To see how it compares, the five note-taking methods compared puts it beside outlining, mapping, charting and sentence notes, and says which suits which class.

The free template

Here is the page as a table. Copy it into a document, print it, or draw it. No email, no sign-up.

Cue column (about a third of the width)	Notes (the rest of the width)
Written within a day: one question per idea, beside the notes that answer it	Written in class: short lines, your own words, a blank line between ideas
Question 1?	The notes that answer question 1
Question 2?	The notes that answer question 2
Question 3?	The notes that answer question 3
Summary	Two or three sentences in your own words, written after the cues, covering the whole page

To rule it on any notebook page in ten seconds: draw a vertical line about a third of the way in from the left margin, top to bottom, and a horizontal line about four finger-widths up from the bottom. The left strip is the cue column. The bottom strip is the summary. The table above and this ruling are the template; both print, and both work.

Step by step: how to take Cornell notes

1. In class, take notes in the right column (the length of the lesson). Short lines. Your own words, not the slide's. Skip a line between ideas so each idea has room for its cue. Abbreviate freely. Copy a worked example in full, because for a worked example the steps are the content.
2. Within a day, write the cues (5 minutes a page). One question per idea, in the left column, beside the notes that answer it. Phrase it the way a teacher would ask it.
3. Write the summary strip (3 minutes a page). Two or three sentences, in your words, that say what the page was about. No copying from the notes above.
4. Study by reciting (5–10 minutes a page). Cover the notes column with a sheet of paper. Read each cue and answer it aloud or on scrap paper. Uncover and check. Put a mark beside every cue you missed.
5. Return in two days and in a week (5 minutes a page each time). Recite again, missed cues first. The dates are what make it stick, and the spacing guide says why to return in two days and a week rather than once, the night before the test.

The cue column is the whole point

A cue is a recall prompt. "Newton's laws" is a heading. "What are Newton's three laws, and what does each one say?" is a cue. The difference is that the second can be answered with the notes covered, and the answer can be marked right or wrong. Because the cues are active recall, a Cornell page is a self-test you built on the day you took the notes.

Three kinds of cue cover most pages. A fact cue asks what: "What does the first law say about a body with zero net force?" A procedure cue asks how: "How do you find the net force on a box on an incline?" A connection cue asks why: "Why does mass cancel in free fall?" Write at least one procedure or connection cue per page. A column of fact cues tests the easiest part of the page.

The summary strip matters less than the cues, because restating is weaker than retrieving. Write it, keep it short, and spend the saved minutes reciting. Chapter 6 of the free playbook, "Capture less, process more", is about this trade.

On the evidence. Direct controlled trials of the Cornell format are few and small, and we would rather say so than cite a weak one. What has strong evidence is the two things the format makes you do. Answering the cues is retrieval practice, which beat rereading by a wide margin on a test a week later (Roediger and Karpicke 2006). Returning to the page over several days is spaced practice, which a review of hundreds of experiments found beats one long session (Cepeda et al. 2006). Kiewra's work on note-taking points the same way: much of the benefit of notes comes from reviewing them, not from the act of writing them down (Kiewra 1985). Cornell notes without the recite step are ordinary notes with a margin.

Worked example: a filled page from a physics lecture

SPH4U, the idea called Newton's laws; free-body diagrams; net force. Here is the page as it would look the next evening, cues written, summary done.

Cue column (written that evening)	Notes (taken in class)
What does the first law say about a body with zero net force?	1st law: no net force → velocity stays constant (including staying at rest)
Write the second law as a vector equation. Which direction is a?	2nd law: F_net = ma. A vector equation; a points the same way as F_net
Why are third-law pairs never on the same free-body diagram?	3rd law: forces come in pairs — equal size, opposite direction, on different objects
What are the four steps for drawing a free-body diagram?	FBD: a dot for the object; every force as an arrow from the dot; label each; choose axes
Draw the FBD for a box pushed along a rough floor. Find a for a 20 N push, 8.0 N friction, 5.0 kg.	Example: 5.0 kg box, push 20 N, friction 8.0 N the other way. F_net = 20 − 8.0 = 12 N. a = F_net / m = 12 / 5.0 = 2.4 m/s^2, in the direction of the push
Summary	Net force decides acceleration, not motion: a body can move with zero net force. Draw every force on one object, add them as vectors, then F_net = ma.

The last cue is a procedure cue, and it carries its own check: a = 12 N ÷ 5.0 kg = 2.4 m/s^2. When you recite, you redo that line from the cue alone, on scrap paper, before you uncover. If you get 2.4, the mark is right. If you forget to subtract the friction and get 20 / 5.0 = 4.0, you have found your gap, which is what the page is for.

Look at the first row too. A student who wrote "1st law" as the cue would, two weeks later, read "1st law" and think "yes, I know that one." The question form stops that. You either say what the law says or you do not.

Cornell notes on a laptop or tablet

The layout works in any notes app as a two-column table with a final row for the summary, or as the template above pasted in. The evidence on longhand against typing is mixed, and one well-known result in favour of longhand has not replicated cleanly; the note-taking methods guide carries the detail. What matters is the cue step, which no device does for you, and the recite step, which needs the notes hidden: a sheet of paper over the screen, or the column collapsed. If the lecture was recorded or the notes arrived as a PDF, the route from a recording or a PDF to notes shows how to get a first draft that you then write cues for.

The mistakes

• Writing the cues in class. There is no time, so they turn into headings ("Newton's 2nd"), and headings test nothing. Cues are the evening's job.
• Copying the slide into the summary. The summary is yours or it is nothing.
• Never covering and reciting. The most common one. A finished Cornell page that is never recited is a decorated page.
• A cue column of single words. "Friction", "FBD", "3rd law". Turn each into a question.
• Reciting once, the night before the test. The page earns its keep on the second and third visits.
• For maths, writing no procedure cue. The cue should ask "How do you …?" and name the first step, and the recite is a redo from blank. Keep the problems you got wrong in an error log for the problems beside the page, so the redo list writes itself.

Summary box

• Three regions: cue column (left, about a third), notes (right), summary strip (bottom).
• Five steps: record in class; cues within a day; summary; recite with the notes covered; return in two days and a week.
• A cue is a question, never a heading.
• The evidence is for the parts — retrieval and spacing — more than for the format. Do the recite step or the format does nothing.
• The template is the table above, or any page ruled in ten seconds.