Search form

Study Tips for the New School Year

 

EducationWorld offers many resources on study tips, such as ideas for helping students with ADHD get organized. Back-to-school time offers the perfect opportunity to review study skills with students. Additionally, several experts in the field have highlighted cutting-edge techniques to promote maximum retention of information. Here's what they had to say.

Go With the ‘Flow’

Bob Sun, chairman, president and CEO of Suntex International, Inc. and inventor of the company’s 24 Game and First in Math Online Program, is a staunch advocate of deep processing.

“The problem that students are facing today is that they are not practicing,” Sun said. “I don’t know any activity you can get good at without practice. I mean even learning to walk—the average 18-month-old toddler will take about 3,000 steps a day, which is tremendous practice.”

Sun suggests that students achieve deep processing when they get to a place of completely focused motivation, often called “flow.” A single-minded immersion in a given activity, he explains, is perhaps the ultimate state of harnessing human emotions in the service of performing and learning.

“If we find ourselves in an immersive activity that is rich, and it occupies and takes 100 percent of our attention, what happens is people begin to report that they lose track of time, they forget about their day-to-day worries,” Sun said. “Essentially, it’s a pleasant experience. So you want to return to that activity, because the experience itself is the reward.”

So, how to more deeply engage students in the classroom? These EducationWorld articles can help:

Choice: The Ultimate Tool for Engaging Students
Academic Choice Motivates Learning
Encouraging Students to Think at Higher Levels
Sure-Fire Student Engagement Techniques
Ways to Engage, Nurture Middle-Schoolers

Deliver ‘Noteworthy’ Lessons

Eileen Tracy, an Oxford-educated expert in study skills, suggests that putting a new twist on age-old techniques can be an effective way to improve study skills. Note-taking has been around forever, yet there are students who write down everything the teacher says verbatim, and those who write almost nothing down; both of which are ineffective. Tracy suggests working with students so that they know how to pluck out keywords from a lecture.

“The art of taking good notes lies in identifying key points,” Tracy said. “This is a very active form of revision which enables you to summarize and absorb vast quantities of information quickly and easily. You’ll save yourself hours of time, and a small fortune on highlighter pens.”

Tracy added that making a special remark about a key point in the discussion is an easy way to help students take better notes.

 “You can help your students with this skill by starting the year off making special note of key points during a lecture,” she said. “Saying, 'Write this down because it’s important' lets the students know the idea is a key one. By the end of the first semester, they should have a pretty good read on your lecture style, and their note-taking will be better for it.”

Here are some EducationWorld resources on note-taking:

Lesson on Summarizing
Note-Taking by Crayon
Lesson on Note-Taking and Plagiarism

Map It Out

Tracy also explained relatively new study techniques such as “mindmapping.” A visual form of studying that prompts students to literally draw thoughts and ideas on paper, mindmapping allows students to review those ideas visually rather than verbally.

“Mindmapping offers a terrific shortcut to revision and essay planning,” Tracy said. “You can also use it for brainstorming. It works for most subjects, particularly arts and humanities, but also some sciences. Students who mindmap comment on how easily ideas come to mind with this technique. Mindmaps are also extremely easy to remember.”

You may find the following mindmapping aids helpful:

Visually Organize Ideas With ‘Popplets’
What is Mindmapping?
Mindmapping: How to Get Started


Article by Jason Tomaszewski, EducationWorld Associate Editor
Education World®         
Copyright © 2012 Education World