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Write questions with one answer, the answer left out and a subject named, and mix in why and compare questions.
Paper packet. Every task here also exists on screen, where it is checked automatically; answers written on paper are not assessed by Nydus. When you are back at a device, enter your answers there.
You will turn a page of notes into questions that ask you to produce the answer: one answer each, the answer not inside, and each one able to stand alone.
Last lesson, a session started from a heading list and a blank page. That works for a chapter with clear headings. Most notes are messier: a page of lines, arrows and half-sentences. This lesson turns such a page into questions, so that every later session has prompts ready, and so the prompts ask you to produce the answer rather than nod at it.
| Term | What it means |
|---|---|
| Prompt | What you see before you answer: a question, a heading, the front of a card. |
| Answer inside | A question that states its own answer, so it can be answered by yes. |
| Stands alone | Makes sense a week later with the notes out of sight: no it, no the second one, no see page 41. |
| Deep question | A why, how or compare question, whose answer is a reason or a difference rather than a single name. |
| Answer column | The answers written beside or behind the questions, covered while you answer and uncovered to check. |
A note tells you something. A question asks you for it. Turning notes into questions is how a page you would reread becomes a page you can practice from.
A question worth writing passes three tests. One answer: it asks for one thing, so you can tell whether you got it. The answer is not inside it: Did the 14th Amendment grant citizenship? can be answered by yes, so nothing is produced. It stands alone: a week from now, with the notes shut, it still makes sense. What does it say? fails; What did the 14th Amendment (1868) say about who is a citizen? passes.
Then vary the kind. A bare fact gets a what question. A cause or a process gets a why or how question. Two things set side by side get a compare question. The IES practice guide (Pashler and colleagues, 2007) recommends quizzing as one of its seven strategies, and separately recommends asking and answering deep questions — why, how, what if, how does this differ from that — because they make you produce the explanation and not only the name.
Another way: picture
Think of each question as a key cut for one lock. A key that opens every door (tell me about the Reconstruction amendments) tests nothing; a key with the lock's number stamped on it (is it the 13th?) tests nothing either.
Another way: steps
One per fact, not one per line and not one per page. A heading already is a prompt, so it gets none. A worked example you can look up again gets none. A line with two separate facts in it gets two questions, so each question still has one answer. A line with a because in it often earns a second, deeper question: a what question for the fact and a why question for the reason.
A typical page of class notes makes somewhere between ten and twenty questions. If it makes three, the questions are asking for too much at once; if it makes forty, you are probably writing one for every example.
Write them where the answers can be covered. The simplest layout is a folded page: questions on the left, answers on the right, fold the right side under. Cornell-style notes build this in, with a narrow cue column for questions beside the notes. Cards work too, with the question on the front. What matters is that you answer out loud or on paper before you uncover — a question you glance at and then read the answer to is a reread with extra steps.
Write the answer in your own words and keep it short. The answer column is for checking, so it should say exactly what would count as right.
Writing the questions is useful work: you have to decide what each line says. But the evidence Dunlosky and colleagues (2013) rate highly is for answering questions from memory, later and more than once. A beautiful question list that is never covered and answered has done very little. The list is the tool; the retrieve-first session is where it is used.
After the Civil War, three amendments changed the US Constitution. The National Archives gives the 13th Amendment's ratification as 1865 (abolishing slavery), the 14th as 1868 (citizenship for all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and equal protection of the laws), and the 15th as 1870 (the right to vote could not be denied on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude).
A fictional student, Ana, has those three lines in her notes. She turns them into five questions. What did the 13th Amendment (1865) abolish? What two guarantees did the 14th Amendment (1868) add? What did the 15th Amendment (1870) forbid as a reason to deny the vote? Then two deeper ones: Why was the 14th Amendment's definition of citizenship needed after the 13th? and How does the 15th Amendment differ from the 14th in what it protects? The answers go on the folded half of the page. Five questions, each with one answer, none answerable by yes.
"True or false: the Erie Canal opened in 1825." The answer is sitting in the question; you only have to recognize it. Ask When did the Erie Canal open?
"Explain Unit 3." One question with twenty answers cannot be checked. Split it until each question has one.
"Why is it important?" Important to whom, and what is it? A week later this question has no subject. Name the thing in every question.
"Copying the notes onto cards is making questions." A card with a definition on the front and nothing on the back is a note on cardboard. The front has to ask.
Read the note line and find how many facts it holds.
Erie Canal, opened 1825, linked the Hudson River to Lake Erie; shipping from the Midwest to New York City got much cheaper. → 3 facts
A date, a route and a consequence are three separate answers.
Write a what question for each bare fact.
Q1: When did the Erie Canal open? Q2: Which two waters did the Erie Canal link?
Each asks for one thing, names the canal, and leaves the answer out.
Write a why question for the consequence.
Q3: Why did the Erie Canal make shipping from the Midwest to New York City cheaper?
The consequence has a reason behind it (boats instead of wagons), so a why question makes you produce the reason.
Write the answers in the answer column, short.
A1: 1825. A2: the Hudson River and Lake Erie. A3: goods went by canal boat instead of overland by wagon.
Short answers make the check quick and honest.
Start from the draft.
Draft: Is the mitochondrion where it makes energy?
It fails two tests at once, which is common.
Take the answer out.
What does the mitochondrion make energy for? → better: What is the job of the mitochondrion?
A yes-or-no question only asks you to recognize the fact.
Name what it stood for.
What is the job of the mitochondrion in a cell, and what molecule does it make? → split: What is the mitochondrion's job? / What energy molecule does the mitochondrion make?
Naming the subject made the question stand alone; splitting it gave each part one answer.
Count the facts in the line.
Water is polar because oxygen pulls the shared electrons more strongly than hydrogen. → a fact and a reason
The because marks a reason worth its own question.
Write the what question.
What kind of molecule is water: polar or nonpolar?
A choice of two is still a produced answer if you say it before looking.
Write the why question.
A note in a fictional student's history notebook: *14th Amendment (1868): citizenship for all persons born or naturalized in the US.* Which question turns that note into retrieval practice?
A fictional unit. Theo has 3 pages of notes. Each page has 14 lines, and 2 of them are headings that get no question. He will work through the whole question list over 2 days. Complete the worked count.
Find the questions on one page.
14 − 2 = a questions per page
Every line with a fact gets one question; headings do not.
Multiply by the number of pages.
3 × per-page questions = b questions
The list is the whole unit, not one page.
Share the list over the two days.
Total ÷ 2 = c questions a day
A fixed number per day makes the list something he can finish, and he answers each one before turning it over.
Four lines from a fictional student's biology notes. For each, choose the kind of question it calls for: **what**, **why or how**, or **compare**.
| Kind of question | |
|---|---|
| The green pigment in leaves is chlorophyll | |
| Leaves turn yellow in fall because chlorophyll breaks down | |
| Plant cells have a cell wall; animal cells do not | |
| Water moves up the stem as it evaporates from the leaves |
A fictional page of chemistry notes has 20 lines. 4 of them are headings or copied examples that get no question. Of the rest, 3 lines each hold two separate facts. How many lines get a question, and how many questions does the page make?
Lines that get a question: a
Questions on the page: b
Four draft questions a fictional student wrote from her notes on the solar system. Give each a verdict: **keep it**, **answer inside**, **needs the page**, or **two answers**.
| Verdict | |
|---|---|
| Is Jupiter the largest planet? | |
| Why is the second one hotter than the first? | |
| Name the planets in order and give each one's number of moons. | |
| Why is Venus hotter than Mercury, although it is farther from the Sun? |
Three lines from a fictional student's notes on the Reconstruction amendments, with the dates the National Archives gives. For each line, choose the question that turns it into retrieval.
| Question to write | |
|---|---|
| 13th Amendment line | |
| 14th Amendment line | |
| 15th Amendment line |
Lesson test: one question per skill, one attempt each, no hints. Your answers are checked when you submit.
Four draft questions from a fictional student's economics notes on supply and demand. Choose the repair each one needs.
| Repair | |
|---|---|
| Does a price ceiling below the market price cause a shortage? | |
| What happens to it when demand rises? | |
| Define supply and demand and draw both curves. | |
| Why does the demand curve slope downward? |
You can turn notes into questions worth answering. Take one page of your own notes, write its questions down the left side, and fold the answers under. Next: putting a gap before the next session. You can stop in the middle of any of this. Closing the page is the whole of stopping — your place and anything you had typed are already saved, and the lesson opens again where you left it.
12. Your turn: one line of chemistry notes, step 3
Why is a water molecule polar?
The answer — oxygen pulls the shared electrons more strongly — is produced, not recognized.