1. Updates students table based on notes table column -

notes.id

using

Implicit JOIN

UPDATE notes, students
SET points = points+1
WHERE notes.student_id = students.id
	AND notes.note = 'My first note'

2. Updates students table based on notes table column -

notes.id

using

explicit JOIN

UPDATE notes
INNER JOIN students ON notes.student_id = students.id
SET students.points = students.points + 1
WHERE notes.id = 1

3. Updates students table based on notes table column -

notes.id

using sub-query

UPDATE students 
SET points = points + 1 
WHERE student_id = (
        SELECT student_id 
        FROM notes 
        WHERE notes.id = 1
    )

4. Updates students table based on notes table column -

notes.id

using

VIEW

First we need to create the VIEW

DROP VIEW IF EXISTS student_notes;

CREATE VIEW student_notes AS
SELECT 
    students.first_name,
    students.last_name,
    students.points,
    notes.*
FROM students
JOIN notes ON notes.student_id = students.id

Then we update the VIEW as a regular table

UPDATE `student_notes` 
SET points = points + 1 
WHERE id = 1;

5. Alternative of the above four updates is to run two completely different queries:

SELECT student_id FROM `notes` WHERE id = 5;
UPDATE students SET points = points + 1 WHERE id = 3;