SU/Cornell Note-Taking System

This semester my courses are very writing intensive and pretty much no exams so strategy topics such as Test Preparation and/or Note Taking were a little difficult in the sense that the notes I would take in my courses weren't conducive to bettering my understanding for exams, because I had none. I still tried Note Taking methods in efforts to help my writing and to help portray my understanding of ideas in my writings. The best method of Note Taking, for me, was the SU/Cornell Note Taking System. As stated in Dr. Marlene Blumin's book It's All About Choices, "this system forces you to do an ongoing review of your notes and it gives you a review of your notes and it gives you a review tool for test preparation" (P.99). I tried this method in my REL 103 course and it proven successful.

The steps for using this system are as follows: 1.) Draw a vertical line 2.5 inches from the left side of the paper. This creates a Recall column. 2.) Trace the first horizontal line at the top of the paper. The top box made creates your Summary Box. 3.) Record all notes in the right, third box. Here is an example of my finished SU/Cornell Note Taking System:

After class, in the left most column, or the recall column, my job was to establish key words or terms that help me recall the information. Now as I took the notes and before I elected to do this system, I realized I had already done that within the notes therefore in the recall column I simply just put arrows pointing me to those key terms or words. At the top in the Summary Box, I wrote summaries of what the notes were about underneath it. After this is done, I just looked at this once a week until I was ready to apply it. I think I am a pretty organized note take but this strategy makes me take an extra look at my notes and by having to apply them to different sections and columns, it helps me see it more and learn it easier with that constant repetition.