The Big Book of Study Notes — High School Edition (Grades 10–12)

Flashcards everywhere, highlighters, hours of revision… and when the test comes, a total blank. Your high schooler isn't lacking in work. They're lacking in hooks.

In high school, everything counts: every grade matters for Parcoursup, the Bac is approaching, and 11 subjects are competing for the same memory. What the summer erases, the school year leaves no time to rebuild.

Top-of-the-class students have one thing in common: they compress. A formula becomes a sentence, a concept becomes an image, an essay outline becomes a reflex. The Big Book of High School Memory Aids gathers 274 of these tricks, from 10th to 12th grade — the condensed knowledge that the best students pass among themselves, finally brought together in one book.

What's in this book

• 274 mnemonic tricks in 11 subjects: math, physics-chemistry, biology, philosophy, history-geography, economics, languages…
• 137 exercises with answers to turn tricks into habits
• Methods dedicated to the Bac and the Grand Oral
• 160 pages covering all three years, from 10th to 12th grade

Who is this for?

• High schoolers from 10th to 12th grade who study hard but struggle to retain information
• Bac candidates who want clear benchmarks, right up to the Grand Oral
• Parents who can no longer help with the core content — but can provide the right tools

Imagine, in a few weeks…

Back at school, the first test. Around them, there is sighing. They, however, are in the flow: the formula is there, the outline too. That evening, they say to you, "Actually, this year is going fine." You know what that sentence is worth. 🎓

A reference book to use at home to find memorization tricks throughout the high school years.

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Give them the condensed tricks of the best students — before summer erases the year.

A book of tricks to memorize high school coursework, from 10th to 12th grade

In high school, the problem isn't understanding: it's keeping everything in your head at once. Math formulas, chemistry mechanisms, philosophy concepts, economics definitions, two languages. This book gathers 274 mnemonic tricks, numbered one by one, divided into eleven sections: mathematics, physics-chemistry, biology, French language, literature, philosophy, history-geography, economics, English, Spanish, and a section on Methods, Bac & Grand Oral. The content follows the general curriculum.

Six tricks, from trig formulas to philosophy benchmarks

"co-co MINUS si-si, si-co PLUS co-si"

Addition formulas in trigonometry without mixing up the signs: cos(a+b) = cos a cos b minus sin a sin b, and sin(a+b) = sin a cos b plus cos a sin b. Two rhythms to remember instead of two lines.

"Please Value Nature, Remember Thermodynamics" (PV=nRT)

The ideal gas law, PV = nRT, in the right order. The card reminds you of the expected units (pascals, cubic meters, moles, and kelvins) as well as the constant's value.

"Radio Waves Make Infrared Visible Ultra X-ray Gamma"

The electromagnetic spectrum ordered from lowest to highest energy: radio, microwave, infrared, visible, ultraviolet, X-rays, gamma rays.

Transcription or translation?

In biology, two words that look alike and get mixed up. You transcribe text in the same language, DNA to RNA; you translate into another language, nucleotides to amino acids. Same logic for mitosis (same cell doubled) and meiosis (half, and four gametes).

"Human beings basically create light, real romantic, naturally symbolic surrealists."

The nine literary movements in chronological order: humanism, baroque, classicism, Enlightenment, romanticism, realism, naturalism, symbolism, surrealism.

"LEGAL = the law, LEGITIMATE = ethics"

A benchmark for the philosophy curriculum: conforming to the law is not the same as conforming to justice. The example given is a forbidden protest that is nevertheless judged to be just.

137 exercises and ten pages of written corrections

Each page of content ends with an exercise: 137 in all, exactly one per page. There are calculations, language applications, and open questions on methodology or philosophy, such as "What does Nietzsche mean by 'God is dead'?"

The corrections occupy ten pages at the end of the book. These are real, fully written-out explanations, several lines long, not just a list of answers. This is what distinguishes the High School volume from the others: you can work alone, make mistakes, and understand why.

Philosophy, Economics, and the Grand Oral

Three areas rarely treated in the form of tricks. The Philosophy section has 28 tricks: curriculum benchmarks, authors, and essay writing methods. The Economics section has 24, from the market to comparative advantage: that is where the card "Demand goes DOWN, supply goes UP" is found, as price increases. The final part goes through the Grand Oral and its format: 20 minutes of preparation, 10 minutes of presentation, 10 minutes of discussion with the jury. This book is not a course summary: it is a collection of tricks to be read one card at a time.

The other levels

The collection starts well before high school: the Middle School version covers 6th to 9th grade, up to the brevet, and the Elementary version covers the basics from 1st to 5th grade. Everything is gathered in the Memory Aids collection. This volume is also available in a printable PDF version.

Encoding, consolidating, retrieving: the three stages of a lesson

In high school, the number of lessons isn't the problem, it's their lifespan. Three years' worth must remain available simultaneously, across ten subjects, for an exam that tests everything at the end. Memory, however, hasn't accelerated. It works in three stages: encoding information, consolidating it, and retrieving it when the time comes.

Encoding is the step that the trick improves. Isolated information is recorded poorly; connected to something else, an image, a word already known, or a sound, it is recorded much better. That is the entire function of a mnemonic device: to create the link that was missing instead of hoping it appears. A four-line formula becomes a six-letter word.

Consolidation happens outside of study hours. The book doesn't go into this mechanism, and that's consistent: it is a collection of tricks, not a neuroscience textbook.

That leaves retrieval, and that is where the book is the most direct. Its Methods section opens with the illusion of knowing: rereading is just recognizing; knowing is retrieving from memory. The instruction boils down to five words: "Close the book, open your memory," and the card suggests flashcards, question on the front, answer on the back. A trick makes this test possible from the very first try, when one still knows almost nothing.

Seven cards taken from outside the usual examples

"Cosine is horizontal, sine is vertical"

On the unit circle, the cosine is read horizontally on the x-axis, and the sine vertically on the y-axis. The card reminds you of the direction of travel, from point (1; 0) and counter-clockwise, as well as the ever-true equality cos²θ + sin²θ = 1.

"The caTION is posiTIVE"

Two syllables are enough to decide: the cation carries a positive charge, the anion a negative charge. The card gives the lists expected in high school, then the explanation: a metal that loses electrons becomes positive, therefore it gives a cation.

"ATtention to the Garage-Cave"

DNA base pairing in two pieces: ATtention gives A across from T, Garage-Cave gives G across from C. The book warns: never A with G, never T with C.

"Prophase, Metaphase, Anaphase, Telophase"

The four phases of mitosis in order: prophase, chromosomes become visible; metaphase, they align in the middle; anaphase, they separate; telophase, two nuclei reform.

The chiasmus, or the letter X

"Chiasmus = the cross, the Greek letter chi." Two groups mirror each other, following the A-B-B-A scheme. The chosen example: one must eat to live and not live to eat. The card advises tracing the links: if they cross, it's a chiasmus.

Por or para?

"PARA looks forward, the goal; POR looks backward, the cause." Salgo para Madrid for destination, gracias por tu ayuda for cause, es para mañana for deadline, viajo por tren for means.

"Family, School, Peers, Media, Work"

The five agents of socialization expected in economics: family, school, peers, media, work. The card then distinguishes between primary socialization, that of childhood, and secondary socialization, that of work and groups joined later.

The other volumes are gathered in the Memory Aids collection, and those for post-baccalaureate in Studies & Competitions.

What the recommended revision methods are worth

Rereading one's lessons is the most widespread and least effective technique. It produces an impression of familiarity that is confused with knowledge: one recognizes the text, but doesn't retrieve it. The book calls this phenomenon the illusion of knowing, and makes it the starting point for its Methods section.

What works requires more effort. Reciting a lesson out loud, notebook closed. Asking yourself questions and answering them from memory. Spacing out your reviews of the same concept instead of grouping everything on the eve of the test. Each of these actions shares the same common point: it forces you to go and retrieve the information, and it is the search that installs the trace, not the rereading.

Two cards in the book add to this. The first advises transforming a dense lesson into a mind map: a diagram that makes the structure of a chapter visible, where a page of text hides it. The second concerns sleep, and it is categorical: memory is built at night, when the brain organizes and engraves what has been learned, and an all-nighter erases the revisions. A third organizes retro-planning, starting from the date of the exam and working backward.

The mnemonic procedure is used differently. It does not organize the work and does not replace any method: it acts on a single piece of information at the moment it needs to be retrieved. A list of six elements, the order of two notions that you always invert, a formula where you no longer know which term goes where. It is a precision tool, not a revision strategy.

A word on what this book is not, to avoid disappointment. It is not a neuroscience textbook: it talks neither of the cortex, nor the hippocampus, nor semantic memory. It is also not a memorization method to train over several months, like the memory palace. It is a collection: 274 ready-to-use tricks, one per concept, with an exercise opposite.

Three mistakes that cost dearly in high school

Confusing rereading with knowing

Highlighting a lesson and then rereading it three times is the most common way to study, and the least effective. One ends up recognizing the sentences, which produces a deceptive feeling of mastery. The only reliable measure is a question: notebook closed, am I able to reproduce the chapter outline? Asking oneself questions and answering them from memory is more tiring than rereading, and makes you retain much more.

Grouping everything on the eve of the test

A night of intensive work fills the working memory, not the long-term memory. The same number of hours spread over three weeks produces a result beyond comparison, because each review strengthens the trace instead of creating it once. This is the principle of spacing, and it is what allows you to retrieve in June a concept seen in September.

Believing there is a miracle method

The memory palace, speed reading, spectacular memorization techniques sold as shortcuts: these methods exist, some work, but they require weeks of training before being of any use. A 12th-grade student three months from the Bac does not have this time, and this book does not claim to teach them that.

It does something else, on a specific point. A mnemonic trick does not improve memory: it makes a particular piece of information easier to memorize, by giving it a short form, a mental image, or a sound. Six elements in an imposed order become a word. Two concepts that one always inverts receive a benchmark that distinguishes them. It is a precision tool, alongside revision cards, summaries, and retro-planning, not in their place.

The rest is ordinary work: understanding in class, doing exercises, sleeping before the test. The book says so itself in its Methods section, and sticks to its role: 274 tricks, one per concept, with an exercise opposite.

The three cards that the Methods section places at the front of the book

"Learning is testing yourself, not rereading"

This is the very first card, and it describes a scene every student knows: you reread your lesson five times, it seems familiar, you think you know it, and the next day it's a total blank. The book calls this trap the illusion of knowing, and summarizes it in one line: rereading is recognizing; knowing is retrieving from memory. The formula to remember is "Close the book, open your memory."

The method that follows is simple: close the lesson, recite or write down everything you remember, then check. The card insists on a counter-intuitive point: getting it wrong then correcting it engraves the information much better than a tenth rereading. And it advises making flashcards, question on the front, answer on the back, which it presents as the number one tool for major revisions: you quiz yourself instead of skimming.

Spaced repetition

Second card, same frankness: the brain forgets quickly, it's normal, it sorts. To engrave a concept durably, you must return to it several times while spacing them out more and more. The printed calendar holds four benchmarks: the same day, D+1, D+7, D+30. Each reminder placed just before forgetting strengthens the trace, and that is why fifteen minutes every two days beats three hours all at once.

The card concludes bluntly on cramming: revising all your subjects on the eve of the test is the worst plan, the brain saturates and fixes nothing.

The Feynman method: if you can explain it, you know it

Third card, and the best test of understanding there is: explain the concept out loud, simply, as if to someone who knows nothing about it, without looking at your notes. Everywhere you stumble or have to reopen the lesson, you have just found a hole to fill. The book attributes it to Feynman and summarizes it as follows: teaching is learning twice. No audience? The card suggests explaining to your wall, your cat, or recording yourself: the important thing is to put words to the idea.

What these three cards change concretely

They reorganize a study evening. You no longer reread the whole chapter: you close it, you test yourself, you rephrase it in your own words, you identify the concepts to retain that don't come to mind. Revision cards are reduced to the essentials, one per chapter, with keywords rather than copied-out sentences, because copying occupies the hand without making the memory work.

The rest depends on the individual. Some retain better what they see and benefit from transforming a chapter into a diagram; others retain what they hear and should recite out loud; others still need to write to assimilate. There is no universal learning method, only effective revisions: testing yourself, spacing, explaining.

Mnemonic tricks come after, on the precise points that these three habits do not resolve: a list whose order is inverted, two concepts one confuses, a formula where you no longer know which term goes where.

How to really use it? Our guide on high school memorization techniques details which techniques work, provides concrete examples, and lists revision mistakes to avoid.