How to colour code notes, the right way

To colour code your notes properly and effectively is more than just slapping streaks of yellow and green across your page.

If you’re a parent, teacher or child, you’re probably looking forward to half term, but we’re quite sure you’re bound to have plenty of work to do.

The kids will have homework to complete and no doubt parents will lend a helping hand and teachers will be marking exercise books and course work ready to give feedback back to students after the school holidays.

So what can you do to make all this studying and marking easier? Colour code it.

Grabbing a bunch of highlighters and dotting colour across the page randomly, does not an effective colour code system make. However, follow these simple rules and make sure that the way you colour code enhances the work and learning you do.

What does colour do?

Colour stimulate our senses. Just think about all the colours you see around you, particularly fast food restaurants. They all use the primary colours to entice us, excite us and make us buy something from them. So how can you use these principles to learn more, remember more and engage more with your work and the work of others?

Warm colours

Warm colours like red, orange and yellow are all known as warm colours.

Reds: Draw attention to urgent and important things

Oranges: Invite the reader to take an action and prevent boredom. Incorporate orange when there’s a lot of information and you need to highlight particular areas of importance or action for your reader.

This is good for teachers who need to get children to highlight important homework in their diaries, or address a particular point of feedback.

Yellows: A big stimulator of mental activity, yellow is ideal for highlighting important chunks of text. Hence why we naturally opt to use this colour when highlighting.

Cool colours

Blues: When a subject is complicated, write or highlight the text in blue. The cool tone will simmer down the intensity of the information and make it easier to digest.

Greens: We all know green is calming and balancing for the mind, this is why many teachers now choose to mark homework with corrections in green rather than red like we have been used to for many years. Fun fact, green is also the colour MI6 use to sign all their documents.

Purples: Purple is very flexible in its use as a highlighter. It can be used to make notes stand out and help you remember important facts in conjunction with other colours.

Using these simple colour coding tips, you’ll find you might be able to recall more information and also share feedback in a more meaningful way with those around you.

Why not pick up a pack of highlighters here and see if you can get started with a cool new colour coding system and reap the benefits of it too.

For more tips and tricks, why not check out these infographics on: