Take our quiz to find out what your revision personality is! >>

How to organise my notes

I’m looking through my A level folder and my notes are very messy and all over the place. For some topics I’ve got reaps of pages of notes that I made outside of lesson time and in other sections I have almost zero notes even though I was present in school. As far as I’m aware, I haven’t lost or given away any of my notes. For the notes that I do have, I think there might be a lot of duplication as in year 12 I did a lot of textbook copying and in year 13 I have good quality notes that I made in September. How do I go about separating the cream from the crop? Thanks!

Reply 1

tiredgiraff

If I were you, I’d use this as a revision opportunity. Go through your textbooks or specifications and make a list of topics and sub-topics. Make dividers for these. For essay subjects I’d have a separate section for essays and marked written work. From there, put your work into the correct sections. Read over the notes and highlight the topics and sub topics on your list according to the quality of the notes you have and consequently how well you think you understand the topic. This will leave you witb a list of topics you need to revise and make new or improved notes for. Reading over your notes should also give you a sense of which note-taking styles you understand best wjen re-reading.

Good luck!

Reply 2

MollyYvonne

Uni student here! Not the most amazing at organise myself, but here we are,

1) FOLDERS - whether you handwrite your notes or type them, folders is a great place to start, and colour coding them is even better e.g. English is Blue, Maths is Red. I type all my notes, and have folders. For example, I do Linguistics, so,

•

YEAR 1

•

YEAR 2

•

YEAR 3

Then, those folders have their own little folders too, e.g.

•

YEAR 1 -> TERM 1 --> WEEK 1, WEEK 2, WEEK 3...

2) WRITING DOWN KEY DATES - if you've got anything important coming up at school, make sure you have a note of it. That's what I did today. I've got essays due in a couple of weeks, so I wrote down when they're due (and if applicable what time) so I know when they are, and to remind myself that they're due.

3) SCHEDULE - again, cause my assignments are due, I've made a little schedule. For example, 'tomorrow I will do XYZ

Hope this helps!