The Cornell Method

Orla has recently adopted the Cornell Method of note taking and it is paying off in spades. It not only takes a fraction of the time to make notes, the time it takes to revise a topic is also slashed. She wouldn't have learned the value of this at school where notes are just copied down from the board. But homeschooling is an environment more like university where it pays to be more efficient in study.

Orla studies one subject exclusively for three days and then sits an assignment on the topic. She needs to maintain an average of three days per assignment in order to submit all her assingnments according to the timetable provided and so leave herself enough time for revision and past papers before the exams. But two weeks ago a topic for History took five days to complete, thus triggering a rethink of how to approach studying and the adoption of the Cornell Method. Now it is more likely she will average less than three days per assignment and have even more time to revise - which will be much easier with compact notes like this.

She also uses Brainscape.com for making flashcards from her notes and testing herself.