The best way to learn how to take notes from a textbook is to stop copying it: preview the chapter, turn each heading into a question, read one section, then close the book and write what you remember. Your notes become a set of questions you can quiz yourself on. Below is the five-step method, a worked heart-failure note page and a Cornell-style template.
Key takeaways
- Copying the textbook is mostly transcription. A 2013 review of 10 study techniques rated rereading, highlighting and summarization low utility and practice testing high.
- The method: preview (about 10 minutes), turn headings into questions, read one section at a time, write from memory with the book closed, then self-quiz.
- Use a Cornell layout: a cue column about 2 inches wide, a notes column, and a summary strip 1 to 2 inches deep. Fill in the cues within 24 hours.
- For nursing chapters, build each condition’s page in one order: pathophysiology, assessment, priority interventions, teaching.
- Laptop or pen matters less than you’d think: a 2021 direct replication found only small, nonsignificant differences in quiz scores.
Why Copying the Textbook Doesn’t Work
Copying moves words from one page to another without making you retrieve anything, and retrieval builds the memory you use on an exam. It also leaves you two long documents to reread instead of a short set of questions.
In a 2013 review, Dunlosky and colleagues rated 10 study techniques. Practice testing and distributed practice (spacing study over time) earned high utility ratings; summarization, highlighting and rereading were rated low, even though students rely heavily on rereading and highlighting.
In Roediger and Karpicke’s 2006 experiments, restudying won on a test 5 minutes later, but practicing recall produced substantially better retention 2 days and 1 week later. Restudying also made students more confident, which is the trap. Learning how to take notes effectively means producing notes you can be tested on.
How to Take Notes From a Textbook: The 5-Step Loop
Run every chapter through five steps: preview, question, read and recall, build the note page, self-quiz. Steps 3 and 4 repeat for each section.
The loop adapts SQ3R (Survey, Question, Read, Recite, Review), a reading strategy designed by Francis P. Robinson and explained in OpenStax’s College Success Concise. The nursing-specific part is Step 4, where notes follow the order of a care question.
Step 1: Preview the Chapter in 10 Minutes
Spend about 10 minutes skimming before you read any body text, so you know what the chapter teaches and where the dense sections are. You are deciding what to look for, not learning it yet.
Objectives, headings, tables and key terms
Learning how to read a textbook starts with the signals it already gives you: headings, bold terms, tables and summaries point to the main ideas.
- Objectives or outcomes: what the chapter expects you to be able to do. Note them at the top of your first page.
- Headings: list the major ones in order; they outline your notes.
- Tables, boxes and figures: mark where they are. They often hold dense details (drug classes, assessment findings, safety points) you’ll quiz from later instead of copying.
- Key terms: circle any you can’t define yet. They become early cue questions.
- Summary and review questions: read the summary first, then glance at the questions.
Use the preview to set a time budget too. OpenStax suggests timing yourself for 5 minutes, multiplying the pages read by 12 for pages per hour, and planning at least twice as long for active reading. At 4 pages per 5 minutes, a 24-page section takes about 30 minutes straight through and about an hour with recall notes.
Step 2: Turn Headings Into Questions
Rewrite each heading as a question before you read that section, leaving space for the answer. The question gives your reading a target and later becomes your quiz cue. This is SQ3R’s Question step.
| Heading | Cue question |
|---|---|
| Pathophysiology | What goes wrong with the pump, and why does fluid back up? |
| Clinical manifestations | What will I see and hear, and what means it’s getting worse? |
| Drug therapy | Which drug classes, what do they do, and what do I monitor? |
| Nursing management | What do I do first, and what do I teach before discharge? |
Good cue questions ask “why” or “what first”, not only “what is”. Explaining why a fact is true (elaborative interrogation) earned a moderate utility rating in the same review.
Step 3: Read a Section, Then Close the Book and Write
Read one section, usually one heading’s worth, then close the book and write what you remember under its question in your own words. Then open the book to check. This is how to take notes while reading a book so the note-taking itself is retrieval practice.
- Read the section straight through. Don’t highlight or write yet; OpenStax advises reading a selection before marking anything.
- Close the book. Write everything you can recall under the cue question: bullets, arrows, a rough sketch.
- Open the book and check. Add what you missed or got wrong in a second color.
- Study the second-color parts first. They are your gaps.
In Karpicke and Blunt’s 2011 study, students who practiced retrieving what they had read learned more than students who built concept maps, including on inference questions. Dunlosky’s guide for teachers gives the same advice for notes: hide the key ideas with your hand and try to write them out.
Recall notes vs transcription
Transcription happens with the book open and tells you nothing about what you know. Recall notes happen with the book closed, in your own words, and show exactly what you couldn’t retrieve.
Step 4: Build a Nursing-Focused Note Page
Turn your recall notes into one page per condition, in the order a clinical question moves: what is going wrong, what you assess, what you do first, and what you teach. Keeping that chain on one page lets you answer “why” as well as “what”.
Pathophysiology → assessment → priority interventions → teaching
- Pathophysiology: two or three lines on the mechanism. If you can’t explain why a sign appears, it’s too thin.
- Assessment: findings that follow from the mechanism, linked back with arrows.
- Priority interventions: what comes first and why, plus what you monitor.
- Teaching: what the patient does at home and when to call for help.
Cornell layout example
The Cornell method, devised by Cornell education professor Walter Pauk in the 1940s, splits a page into a recall column about 2 inches wide, a notes column, and a 1- to 2-inch summary area at the bottom (OpenStax). Fill in the cues and summary within 8 hours if you can, and no later than 24. Here the cues are questions, so covering the notes column turns the page into a quiz.
| Cue (question) | Notes (recall, own words) |
|---|---|
| What goes wrong? | Heart can’t pump oxygen-rich blood efficiently, so blood backs up. Weak squeeze = systolic HF (HFrEF). Stiff, fills poorly = diastolic HF (HFpEF). Left, right or both sides. Fluid collects in lungs, liver, GI tract, arms and legs. |
| What do I assess? | Short of breath with activity or lying down; waking up breathless; cough; crackles. Swollen feet and ankles, distended neck veins, weight gain, fatigue, urinating at night. |
| What do I do first? | Breathing first: rate, effort, lung sounds; oxygen as ordered. Daily weight. Give ordered meds (diuretics remove extra fluid and salt). Salt and fluid limits as ordered. |
| What do I teach? | Weigh every morning: same scale, after voiding, before eating, similar clothes; log it. Call the provider for a gain of more than 2 to 3 lb in a day or 5 lb in a week. Ask before any over-the-counter drug; ibuprofen and naproxen can worsen HF. |
| Summary: The pump can’t keep up, so fluid backs up into the lungs and body. My job is to catch fluid overload early (breathing, weight, edema), carry out ordered treatment, and teach daily weights and when to call. | |
Clinical details in this example come from MedlinePlus pages on heart failure, heart failure home monitoring and pulmonary edema.
This page is a note-taking example, not a care plan. Weight-gain thresholds, sodium and fluid limits and medication orders vary by patient. Follow your program’s textbook, facility policy and your instructor’s guidance.
Step 5: Self-Quiz the Chapter
Cover the notes column, answer each cue out loud or on scrap paper, then uncover and check. Keep going until you’ve answered every cue correctly at least once, then quiz again on a later day, the routine Dunlosky recommends for notes and flashcards.
Because distributed practice was the other high-utility technique, plan a short re-quiz two or three days later and again before the exam. Our guide to practice testing covers the research and a three-pass routine.
Chapter questions
Answer the end-of-chapter review questions with the book closed, then check your reasoning, not just the letter. A miss points to the section to redo in Step 3.
Edition-matched practice items
A test bank is a set of chapter-by-chapter practice questions with rationales, matched to one textbook edition. Used after your notes, it checks whether your answers hold up when a question is phrased differently. It is a self-assessment aid, not your instructor’s exam.
Publishers write test banks mainly for instructors, and some programs restrict students from using them. Read your honor code or handbook, ask your instructor if it’s unclear, and if your program prohibits them, don’t use one. Our guide on how to use a nursing test bank covers the workflow.
Match the edition first. Elsevier lists Lewis’s Medical-Surgical Nursing 13th edition (January 2026, three new chapters) and Potter and Perry’s Fundamentals of Nursing 12th edition (January 2025); Wolters Kluwer lists Porth’s Pathophysiology 11th edition (February 2024). Chapter numbers can shift, so check the ISBN on your book first.
Once a chapter’s note page is done, these add questions to check it against. Each matches the edition before the current one.
- Lewis’s Medical-Surgical Nursing 12th Edition test bank — med-surg courses still on the 12th edition, not the 13th.
- Fundamentals of Nursing 11th Edition (Potter and Perry) test bank — fundamentals courses on the 11th edition.
- Porth’s Pathophysiology 10th Edition test bank — patho courses on the 10th edition, for checking your mechanism lines.
Each test bank is matched to one edition and ISBN-13. Check the number on your book before you buy.
How to Take Notes From a Textbook in Each Nursing Course
Keep the same five steps in every course, but change the note-page skeleton to fit what the course tests.
| Course | Note-page skeleton | Self-quiz move |
|---|---|---|
| Anatomy and physiology | Structure → function → what fails when it breaks | Label a blank diagram from memory |
| Pathophysiology | Cause → mechanism → signs → complications | Explain the chain aloud, start to finish |
| Pharmacology | Class → action → key adverse effects → nursing checks → teaching | Cover every column except the drug name |
| Fundamentals | Skill or concept → steps → rationale → safety checks | Write each step and its “why” |
| Med-surg | Pathophysiology → assessment → priority interventions → teaching | Answer the four cue questions |
For A&P, sketch and label rather than write paragraphs. For practice questions, the anatomy and physiology test banks and fundamentals of nursing test banks are sorted by textbook and edition, and every subject sits under nursing test banks. To fit this around lectures and clinicals, see how to study in nursing school.
Digital vs Handwritten Notes
Use whichever medium lets you write in your own words and quiz yourself later; the research shows no reliable winner. OpenStax notes that most researchers agree the format matters less than what you do with notes afterward.
The handwriting claim traces to a 2014 Mueller and Oppenheimer study of 67 Princeton students. A 2021 direct replication with 145 Tufts students, reported by the Association for Psychological Science, found only small, statistically nonsignificant differences in quiz scores between laptop and longhand notes. Typed notes held more words and more verbatim overlap with the lecture, and more verbatim overlap was associated with lower scores.
Those studies used lecture notes, and students couldn’t review notes before the quiz. For textbook notes, the laptop risk is the one they measured: typing makes transcription easy.
- Typing: searchable and easy to reorganize. Use a two-column table for the Cornell layout, and never paste from an e-book.
- Handwriting or stylus: slower, which forces you to condense, and easier for arrows and sketches.
If you need to know how to take notes on a book you’ve rented or borrowed, keep notes in a separate notebook keyed to page numbers and use removable sticky tabs instead of ink.
Frequently asked questions
How do you take notes from a textbook quickly?
Time-box the preview to about 10 minutes, then work one heading at a time: read, close the book, write bullets from memory, check. Don’t copy tables; note where they are and quiz from them later. Use shorthand such as w/ and b/c. Active reading takes at least twice as long as plain reading, so plan for it rather than skipping recall.
Should I highlight my textbook?
Lightly, and only after you’ve read the section. Dunlosky’s review rated highlighting low utility, and one study he describes found students who highlighted did worse on questions that required connecting ideas. If you highlight, mark the key term or one line, not whole paragraphs, then turn each highlight into a cue question.
How long should textbook notes be?
Much shorter than the textbook. A workable rule of thumb is one Cornell page per major heading or condition, with a two- or three-sentence summary at the bottom. If your notes for a section run nearly as long as the section, you’re transcribing; close the book and rewrite them from memory as bullets.
Is it better to take notes by hand?
Not reliably. A 2014 study favored handwriting, but a 2021 direct replication found only small, nonsignificant differences in quiz scores between laptop and longhand notes. Typed notes did contain more verbatim text. Pick the medium where you write in your own words and can quiz yourself, and don’t paste passages from an e-book.
How do I review my notes before an exam?
Quiz yourself instead of rereading. Cover the notes column and answer every cue question, redo the misses until you get each right once, and spread those sessions across several days rather than one night. Then work practice questions from the chapter or an edition-matched source, and send any misses back to Step 3 for that section.
Bottom line
Pick the next chapter on your syllabus and run Steps 1 to 3 on its first section tonight: a 10-minute preview, cue questions from the headings, then one section read and recalled with the book closed. Build the Cornell page tomorrow and quiz from it two days later.
Sources & further reading
- PubMed — Dunlosky et al. (2013), Improving Students’ Learning With Effective Learning Techniques
- American Educator (AFT) — Dunlosky, Strengthening the Student Toolbox
- PubMed — Roediger and Karpicke (2006), Test-Enhanced Learning
- OpenStax — College Success Concise, 3.4 Helpful Note-Taking Strategies
- Association for Psychological Science — Don’t Ditch the Laptop Just Yet
- MedlinePlus — Heart failure: home monitoring
- MedlinePlus — Heart failure
