Revision note maker

Cornell notes. Spaced practice. Saved against your email so you can pick up on any device.

Why structured notes? Research shows that organising notes into cue questions, detail and summary strengthens retrieval and long-term memory. Students who combine this with metacognition and spaced practice consistently outperform those who rely on re-reading or highlighting.

No notes yet

Create your first revision note to start building your spaced practice schedule.

Nothing due for review

Your spaced practice schedule will appear here once you have saved notes.

For teachers

This tool is free for your students to use. It combines three strategies that research consistently identifies as the most effective for revision: metacognition, structured note-taking and spaced retrieval practice. Notes save to each student's email so they can use the tool on any device.

Metacognition

Students reflect on what they know and don't know before and after each study session. This develops self-regulation — the ability to plan, monitor and evaluate their own learning. Research by Dunlosky et al. (2013) identifies this as a key predictor of academic success.

Cornell notes

The note-taking grid structures information into three zones: cue questions (retrieval triggers), detailed notes (comprehension) and a summary (synthesis). Creating cue questions is itself a form of elaborative interrogation. The summary forces compression and meaning-making.

Spaced retrieval practice

After saving a note, the tool schedules it for review at increasing intervals using a confidence-based algorithm. Students attempt to answer their own cue questions from memory before revealing their notes. Topics rated as "struggling" return the next day; "confident" topics space out progressively. This exploits the spacing effect and testing effect — two of the most robust findings in cognitive science.

How to use it with your class

Share the link with students and ask them to create one note per topic. The tool works for every subject and exam board — students create all the content themselves. Could be set as a homework task ("Create Cornell notes on today's lesson and bring your cue questions to next lesson") or as a revision starter activity.

This tool is based on principles from
Outstanding Teacher by Yvette Reinfor
Published by Routledge