40 Best Note Taking Templates for Effective Learning

Every student is constantly looking for tried and true methods, tools, and techniques to make their study process more effective.

And note taking on lectures and textbooks is a skill that no student can live without.

Why?

Note taking is a convenient way to record any material for future review. It makes it easy to refresh the information in your memory as soon as you look at your notes. It also helps you find out the origin of facts and ideas, as well as your thoughts about them.

Effective note taking will let you:

• Discover and record the main ideas of the covered material
• Focus on the relevant data
• Memorize information faster

The Custom Writing team gathered best note taking techniques that you can use for any discipline, including a textbook note taking template, reading notes template, and many more. Some of the methods offer a multi-purpose design that is effective for a wide variety of classes.

Plus, all of these notes organizers are broken down into groups for your convenience. You are free to download any of these templates and use them for your classes.

📖 Prepare for Reading

Before you start reading and analyzing any given text, make sure you’re ready. These two note taking methods will guide you through questions and directions to help you get acquainted with a new textbook or book before you actually start reading it. They will save you a considerable amount of time and effort.

1. Textbook Feature Analysis

This is a template with guidelines to explore a textbook.

2. Pre-Reading Notes

This sheet is an effective tool to reinforce your note taking skills. Just scan your book, and answer the questions listed in the right-hand field.

🤔 Read and Analyze

Reading literature like novels or plays involves a different approach compared to studying a textbook. In most cases, the meaning of the author’s words is implied, so you have to dive deep into the world of figurative language to finally get to the essence of the words. This section offers note taking methods to help you understand what the author means and learn how to discuss it.

Even better:

You can also use some of these techniques to explore certain scientific processes, study historical events, or examine other disciplines more effectively.

3. Process Notes

This one-page chart will help you study the stages of different processes.

4. Reciprocal Notes

Use this note recording method to determine the important events and details of the material you’re studying.

5. Response to Literature

With the help of the stems in this template, you’ll easily assess the material you’ve gotten acquainted with.

6. SQ3R Notes

This name of this effective reading strategy template stands for its five consecutive steps: Survey. Question. Read. Recite. Review.

7. Q Notes

This tool combines the features of SQ3R with the Cornell note taking method. Are you ready to quiz yourself by folding over a sheet of paper and answering your own questions?

8. Inference Notes

With the target illustration in this template, you might think you’re at a shooting range.

Hardly!

Just incorporate six different facts or examples with their explanations in the target’s outer ring.

9. Think Aloud

We are always thinking while we read, but oftentimes our thinking is not as focused as it should be. Thinking aloud is a strategy to build your comprehension while reading and improve your analytical and speaking skills.

10. Interactive Notes

These Before/During/After notes will accompany you throughout the entire reading process. You should answer the questions in the columns and add brief details, associations, or comments.

11. Summary Notes

This note taking template will smoothly lead you to write a great summary of a chapter, book, or article that you have to speak or write about.

12. Persuasion Notes

Are you struggling to find and organize facts to persuade someone to take your position?

Then why not use a ready-made note taking template in PDF?

13. Judge’s Notes

This effective note taking strategy prepares you to write a paper in which you state your opinion backed up by solid evidence. With this template, you’ll have a real chance of persuading your opponents.

14. Reporter’s Notes

This note taking template allows you to act like a reporter and deeply analyze any material using just seven simple questions as your tool.

15. KWHL Chart

Despite its strange name, this chart can come in handy. Students should use this tool before, during, and after learning a new topic in any class.

📊 Compare, Contrast, and Evaluate

As students, you frequently get assignments to:

• Compare and contrast certain things, ideas, features, etc.
• Identify different degrees or categories of things.

These activities are very useful as they develop your critical and analytical thinking and encourage you to get a deeper understanding of the topic.

The templates in this section will facilitate this process for you.

16. Think in Threes Triangle

You’re probably used to comparing and contrasting two objects.

But what about going beyond “yes” and “no” or “good” and “bad”?

17. T-Chart Notes

You can use this two-column organizer for various assignments and purposes.

18. Spreadsheet Notes

You can use this generic spreadsheet for almost any subject. This method helps you recognize and embrace many features at once.

19. Venn Diagram Notes

A Venn diagram is used to help you compare and contrast different things.

20. Continuum

This note taking method in PDF will help you evaluate and organize what you read, write, hear, or watch on a continuum.

🗺️ Create Maps, Charts, and Outlines

Organizing the material you’re learning into maps or charts, as well as outlining it, helps you quickly grasp and review all the necessary facts.

This way you can:

• Arrange your information logically.
• Show relationships.
• Stay consistent.

Feel free to download any of the free note taking templates offered in this section!

21. Cornell Notes

The Cornell method of note taking is a traditional and widely used system to record, review, and retain any material. You can use Cornell notes to write in your notebook, on a sheet of paper, on a wall, on your hand, or on the printed template that you can download here.

22. Webpage Notes

A blank webpage template works great as a visual organizer for some classes. Look at our imaginary home page for an American History site, and then use the blank template below.

23. Outline Notes

The simple outlining system of note taking is a well-organized strategy if you do it right. You don’t need to edit it too much, and you can add as many ideas as necessary.

24. Sentence Note Taking

This one’s easy! All you have to do is to put every new fact or idea on a separate line in sentence form. No need to draw anything or to think too hard during the note taking process. Use your textbook to make notes or print out our helpful template.

25. Cluster Notes (Mind-Mapping)

This multi-purpose note taking method can be used for lectures in any discipline. All you have to do is to create different shapes and insert the relevant data inside them.

26. Sequence Flow Map

Fill in the ovals with the necessary information and discuss your notes in your conclusions.

27. Charting Method

The charting method works great if you need to divide your notes into categories, like:

• Dates
• Features
• Similarities
• Events

🧠 Analyze Plot, Events, and Characters

In this category, you’ll find distinct note taking templates to analyze the exposition, setting, or characters of any story you have to read. These tools will help you find meaning even in minor details that you may not have noticed while reading.

Develop your creative and analytical thinking skills with these templates!

28. Plot Diagram

Keep forgetting the key stages of the plot? You don’t need to reread your story or book a thousand times—just use this diagram!

29. Event Spider

As soon as you look at the important events and details of a story listed in this template, you’ll recall all the key moments from the chapter or book you’ve read.

30. Character Map

The many literary techniques of characterization can be difficult to master. But not with this template for your character assessment!

31. Episodic Notes

You can use this note making method for a wide array of tasks in which you need to visualize and explain the stages of a process.

32. Target Notes

This style of note taking is a very popular and useful tool when you have to evaluate someone or something by explaining why, when, and to what extent they are important.

33. Timeline Notes

This multi-use tool can serve different purposes:

• Conducting scientific experiments
• Studying history
• Reading
• Doing other activities

🗃️ Organize Ideas into a Hierarchy

If you need to show the hierarchy of certain things or ideas, it’s very easy to do with the help of pyramids. Look at these two templates we’ve prepared for you and use them to organize your material logically or to narrow down your topic.

34. Hierarchical Notes

It’s as simple as ABC: put the most solid, significant, and basic aspects or ideas at the bottom and then go up the pyramid by adding less and less important things.

35. Inverted Pyramid

The Inverted Pyramid is the exact opposite of the Hierarchical Notes listed just above. You can use this strategy to narrow down your topic.

🖨️ Print Out, Cut, and Fill In

Custom-Writing is here to save your time and effort by offering you templates that you can print out, cut, and use for your studies right away.

36. Critical Reading Bookmarks

This template is great to use as a bookmark while reading. Refer to the template to:

• Make notes about characters
• Answer the given questions for critical analysis

37. Vocabulary Squares

Print and cut out these vocabulary squares to easily analyze new words and quickly memorize them.

38. Idea Cards

There are endless purposes that you can use these Idea Cards for:

• To fill in the names of characters/events
• To discuss important points about them
• To organize them into clusters
• To show their relationships or causes and effects

🗣️ Discuss in Groups

“Truth is sprouted in discussion,” right?

We all know that properly structured teamwork is sure to:

• Reinforce skills relevant to both individual and group work.
• Develop skills arising from collaborative efforts.
• Improve your analytical, speaking, and persuasive abilities.

So why not make the best of it?

39. Roundtable Notes

Write a topic or main idea in the middle circle and add four approaches or supporting details around it.

40. Lit Circle Notes

This note taking template is a mix of cooperative studying, independent reading, and in-group discussion.

No matter what subject you are studying, these templates will save you a considerable amount of time both in the classroom and at home. So don’t just take notes and then rewrite them later—do it right the first time!

Some of the materials in this article were created based on Jim Burke’s templates.

You might also be interested in:

• How to Study Effectively: Tricks to Save Time Studying
• Must-Know Test Taking Tips & Strategies
• Bloom’s Taxonomy—How to Make Your Studying Perfect?
• Bloom’s Taxonomy: Apps to Improve Your Studying

References

1. How To Take Study Notes, 5 Effective Note Taking Methods: Oxford Learning Centres
2. Make Your Cornell Notes Template with Word: Productivity Portfolio
3. The Best Note-Taking Methods: GoodNotes Blog
4. Lecture Note Taking: College of Saint Benedict, Saint John’s University
5. Cornell Notes: Wyzant Resources
6. Note Taking: Penn State Learning
7. Note-Taking Templates: WorksheetWorks.com
8. Note Taking: Academic Skills Center
9. Note Taking Techniques: AcademicTips.org
10. Take Notes by Hand for Better Long-Term Comprehension: Association for Psychological Science
11. Note Taking Tips: Chapman University
12. Free Online Graph Paper, Cornell Note-taking Lined: Incompetech