The format provides the perfect opportunity for following through with the 5 R’s of note-taking. Here they are:

1. Record. During the lecture, record in the main column as many meaningful facts and ideas as you can. Write legibly.

2. Reduce.  As soon after as possible, summarize these ideas and facts concisely in the Reduce Column. Summarizing clarifies meanings and relationships, reinforces continuity, and strengthens memory. Also, it is a way of preparing for examinations gradually and well ahead of time.

3. Recite. Now cover the column, using only your jottings in the Recall Column as cues or “flags” to help you recall, say over facts and ideas of the lecture as fully as you can, not mechanically, but in your own words and with as much appreciation of the meaning as you can. Then, uncovering your notes, verify what you have said. This procedure helps to transfer the facts and ideas of your long term memory.

4. Reflect. Reflective students distill their opinions from their notes. They make such opinions the starting point for their own musings upon the subjects they are studying. Such musings aid them in making sense out of their courses and academic experiences by finding relationships among them. Reflective students continually label and index their experiences and ideas, put them into structures, outlines, summaries, and frames of reference. They rearrange and file them. Best of all, they have an eye for the vital-for the essential. Unless ideas are placed in categories, unless they are taken up from time to time for re-examination, they will become inert and soon forgotten.

5. Review. If you will spend 10 minutes every week or so in a quick review of these notes, you will retain most of what you have learned, and you will be able to use your knowledge currently to greater and greater effectiveness. 

Cornell Note Taking System

Note Taking Links
Taking Notes in Class
Taking Notes for Others