How to do active recall with your notes

Write questions in the margin

After class, draw a narrow column beside your notes. For each paragraph, write a question it answers: “What are the three branches of government?” or “Why did the reaction slow down?” This is the cue column of Cornell-style notes.

To review, cover the notes and answer each question aloud or on paper. Uncover and check. The notes become a set of flashcards without rewriting them.

The blank-page check

Pick a heading from your notes, close the book and write everything you can remember on a blank page in a few minutes. Then open your notes and add what you missed in a different colour.

The coloured additions show exactly what to review next. Repeat the check in a few days and see whether the coloured parts shrink.

Move the hardest prompts to flashcards

Questions you keep getting wrong deserve a spaced schedule. Copy them into a flashcard deck so they return before you forget them, rather than waiting for the next time you happen to open the notebook.

If your notes are typed or saved as a PDF, you can draft cards from them and edit each one so it asks a single clear question.

Space the sessions

Review new notes within a day, again a few days later, then after a week or two. Spreading the same study time over several sessions leads to better retention than one long session.

Keep sessions short. Ten minutes of honest recall is more useful than an hour of rereading the same page.

Try it yourself

Your notes say: “Mitochondria produce most of the cell’s ATP through respiration.” Write a margin question for it.

References

• Karpicke & Blunt (2011), Retrieval practice produces more learning than elaborative studying with concept mapping, Science
• Cepeda et al. (2006), Distributed practice in verbal recall tasks, Psychological Bulletin