Study Skills
Click Here to Read About Balancing Studying and Wellbeing.
Setting academic goals and working hard towards them is great, but your wellbeing is a big priority too. We would argue that your wellbeing should be your highest priority. You won't be able to perform at your best if you are at your worst. With that in mind, remember to strive to find a balance with your study where you also maintain your social, mental, emotional, spiritual and physical health as well. You will find it very difficult to get through school if you do not also look after your wellbeing.
Sometimes we feel pressured to do well; that pressure can come from ourselves or from people around us. A healthy amount of pressure can be motivating. Ideally, it is delivered in a way that feels positive and encouraging. But when that pressure is too much, or we are not able to achieve the desired level of achievement (be that results, hours studied etc.), then that pressure can result in a loss of wellbeing. Be realistic and sustainable in your goals and efforts and long term you will be more likely to succeed in life.
According to Beyond Blue "Young people can support themselves getting through some of the tough times in adolescence by learning and practising useful skills and habits. There’s a wide range of apps out there that can help build these positive approaches by helping young people to:
develop resilience and coping skills
track and manage their mood and thoughts
improve their learning and communication skills
track physical health, including sleep, movement and nutrition." (2021)
Learn about developing these skills through their website with helpful tips and tools.
Just as we don't expect that you will intuitively know solutions to Year 12 Physics problems, we don't expect that you will be able to always know how to navigate wellbeing problems. When you are finding it tough, reach out for help and learn new strategies. Sometimes your friends and family can help, sometimes you need to reach out to school teachers, support teachers or counsellors. Beyond Blue have a great list of tips and tools for when you want to try to manage your wellbeing yourself.
Needing help does not indicate that you are not intelligent, but reaching out for help when you need help does indicate that you are intelligent!
At Smith's Hill High School, if you need help with your wellbeing, please speak to your Year Advisor, a trusted teacher, or you can make a request to see the school counsellor via email (provided to you by the wellbeing team), or use the paper referral form available from Student Services Reception in A Block. This paper referral is also available outside the school counsellor's door (top of A-Block). Talking to a parent, carer or GP is a great strategy for help outside of school as well.
Shortcuts to Studying Effectively (For All Students)
Use a variety of Retrieval Practices:
Retrieval Practice is a learning strategy focused on creating routines to see how much, and how well you can remember the subject of your study.
Through the act of retrieval, or calling information to mind, our memory for that information is strengthened and forgetting is less likely to occur. This also identifies what you do not know and need to revise.
Retrieval practice is a proven powerful strategy for improving academic performance.
Here are some examples of retrieval practice, it is best if you use a variety:
Choose a concept and write down everything you can about it from memory, dig deep, lean into finding the point where you struggle to remember more and keep going -this brings rewards!
Use a tool like Bloom's Question Stems to create your own test or revision questions that progressively work upward through each of Bloom's levels of thinking from Remembering to Analyzing, Evaluating, and Creating. Write your answers in your current and future study sessions. Yes, this is hard; it is precisely this effortful style of learning that leads to higher recall and greater flexibility in your understanding.
Teach someone else the concept... a friend, an adult, even a pet! Prepare yourself, choose a focused concept, and try not to use any notes so that you rely on your memory retrieval. As you teach, ask questions to check for understanding -if your pet talks back, let someone know.
Translate your knowledge of a concept into a mind map or another information visualisation tool, this website has great examples of visual tools for organising ideas (the webpage is intended for idea generation, but works very well for our purpose as well).
Create symbols or rough drawings to represent an idea -this process of thinking how to visualise an idea increases your depth of knowledge and flexibility of understanding.
Revise the content over distributed (separated) study sessions: today, in two days, in one week, in three weeks -this massively increases recall.
Don't cram one subject all night! 'Interleaving' is studying multiple subjects during a study session. You can have a subject you focus on more, but switch it up a bit. You can interleave between totally different subjects, and you can interleave between different components of one subject. One study found that high school students who used interleaving in maths scored nearly doubled the test scores compared to classmates who studied in single blocks (The Learning Scientists). Don't swap back and forth too much, this can become more like multi-tasking which is very negative for your learning.
To download posters of six effective study methods click here,
Below this section are two equally fantastic podcasts explaining retrieval practice as a study technique. Both feature techniques that work for all students including neurodivergent learners.
On the left is Cinthia Nebel of The Learning Scientists; better for learners who like a more direct description.
On the right is Gretchen Wegner of the AntiBoringLab; better for learners who are convinced they cannot study.
Six Strategies for Effective Learning by Yana Weinstein, Megan Smith, & Oliver Caviglioli is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
What if you could find a bunch of scientists, all with PhD's in how students learn, and they could explain the science in a way that was easy to understand and put into practice... and they used pictures?...well, meet The Learning Scientists.
Start by listening to the podcast Learning How to Learn, Studying How to Study Then if you want more:
they have a website
they have a YouTube channel
and their FAQ is a powerhouse trouble-shooting session of why and how.
Tip: For the podcast episode below, you can skip forwards to about 4min30sec when they properly begin talking about the topic.
Ep. 207. The Neurodiversity Podcast: Interview with Gretchen Wegner, creator of the AntiBoringLab YouTube channel.
Did you know that the techniques are completely different for first learning something, and studying for recall?
Did you know that each time you study something, you should use a different process for it to work better?
Do you use blue masking tape correctly when studying?
Gretchen is empowering, Gretchen will give you the power to tweak your strategies for even greater performance boosts, and this is true for any learner type.
Start by listening to the podcast Unique Learning Challenges of Neurodivergent Brains.
If you want more from Gretchen:
she has website
she has a free course
she has the Anti-Boring Learning Lab YouTube Channel.
The Problem with that Highlighter...
Reading and re-reading your notes is not actively engaging in the material; highlighting the important bits might feel like important studying, but it only helps when you are first developing an understanding of a concept.
Reading is an important part of pre-studying, but learning information requires actively engaging in the material (Edwards, 2014). Active engagement is the process of constructing meaning from text and that involves you making connections what you already know and how this new knowledge changes your understanding of a topic, is your class working towards understanding something, forming examples, and regulating your own learning (Davis, 2007). Active studying does not mean highlighting or underlining text, re-reading, or rote memorization. Though these activities may help to keep you engaged in the task, they are not considered active studying techniques and are weakly related to improved learning (Mackenzie, 1994).
Ideas for active studying include:
Create a study guide by topic. Formulate questions and problems and write complete answers. Create your own quiz. Make a study group and quiz each other. If you want to learn how to formulate questions that test for different levels of understanding, read the Questioning page, in particular the Bloom's Taxonomy section. Tip: Create questions that build through all six levels of Bloom's understanding to build towards higher-order thinking.
Become a teacher. Say the information aloud in your own words as if you are the instructor and teaching the concepts to a class. Teach a friend or a family member the information.
Derive examples that relate to your own experiences.
Create concept maps or diagrams that explain the material.
Develop symbols that represent concepts.
For non-technical classes (e.g., English, History, Psychology), figure out the big ideas so you can explain, contrast, and re-evaluate them.
For technical classes, work the problems and explain the steps and why they work.
When studying people who have solved problems, identify what were their traits or characteristics that positively contributed to their success.
Study in terms of question, evidence, and conclusion: What is the question posed by the instructor/author? What is the evidence that they present? What is the conclusion? Why is this important? Does it leave unanswered questions?
Organisation and planning will help you to actively study for your courses. Use planners to schedule and organise your study in a sensible and sustainable way, click here for planners and tips. When studying for a test, organise your materials first and then begin your active reviewing by topic (Newport, 2007). Often teachers or experts provide lists of key subtopics or themes relating to the syllabus. Use them as a guide to help organise your materials. For example, gather all of the materials for one topic (e.g., PowerPoint notes, textbook notes, articles, homework, etc.) and put them together in a pile. Label each pile with the topic and study by topics.
Digging Deeper Into Retrieval Practice
Retrieval practice is a simple but incredibly effective research based strategy in which calling information to mind subsequently enhances and boosts learning. A simple example is sitting down and writing out everything you know about a specific topic. In that process, look back over what you have written and see if it triggers any other facts you remember. Deliberately recalling information forces us to pull our knowledge “out” and examine what we know; we also discover what we don’t know and identify gaps that can be fixed. We often think we’ve learned some piece of information, but we struggle when we try to recall the answer. It’s precisely this “struggle” or challenge that improves our memory and learning – by trying to recall information, we exercise or strengthen our memory (Agarwal et al., 2020).
According to retrieval experts Agarwal et al.,
Retrieval practice makes learning effortful and challenging. Because retrieving information requires mental effort, we often think we are doing poorly if we can’t remember something. We may feel like progress is slow, but that’s when our best learning takes place. The more difficult the retrieval practice, the better it is for long-term learning. For instance, recalling an answer to a science question improves learning to a greater extent than looking up the answer in a textbook. And having to actually recall and write down an answer to a flashcard improves learning more than thinking that you know the answer and flipping the card over prematurely. Struggling to learn – through the act of “practicing” what you know and recalling information – is much more effective than re-reading, taking notes, or listening to lectures. Slower, effortful retrieval leads to long-term learning. In contrast, fast, easy strategies only lead to short-term learning" (2020).
Examples of retrieval practice include:
Flash cards (and writing down your answers)
Multiple choice questions
Short and long answer questions where you write out your response.
Tips for retrieval based study:
Use a variety of question types: fact-based, conceptual, and higher order (Blooms) and transfer questions (consider from different subject perspectives / connect this idea to another subject).
Check your answers, look for holes in your knowledge, minor errors and do a retrieval quiz again.
Mix up how you check quiz techniques and evaluate how effective your answers were.
(Agarwal et al., 2020).
Does Retrieval Practice Increase Anxiety?
"No, in fact it decreases test anxiety! Students not only become used to the process of retrieval but because learning increases, they become more comfortable with course content and less anxious about upcoming exams. Our surveys of nearly 1,500 middle school and high school students confirm that 72% report a decrease in test anxiety by the end of the school year" (Agarwal et al., 2020).
Interleaving (Distributed Practice) is Powerful
One of the most impactful learning strategies is “distributed practice”—spacing out your studying over several short periods of time over several days and weeks (Newport, 2007). The most effective practice is to work a short time on each class every day. The total amount of time spent studying will be the same (or less) than one or two marathon sessions, but you will learn the information more deeply and retain much more for the long term—which will help get your level of achievement. The important thing is how you use your study time, not how long you study. Long study sessions lead to a lack of concentration and thus a lack of learning and retention.
In order to spread out studying over short periods of time across several days and weeks, you need control over your schedule with a good study timetable plan. Keeping a list of tasks to complete on a daily basis will help you to include regular active studying sessions for each class. Try to do something for each class each day. Be specific and realistic regarding how long you plan to spend on each task—you should not have more tasks on your list than you can reasonably complete during the day.
For example, you may do a few problems per day in math rather than all of them the hour before class. In history, you can spend 15-20 minutes each day actively studying your class notes. Thus, your studying time may still be the same length, but rather than only preparing for one class, you will be preparing for all of your classes in short stretches. This will help focus, stay on top of your work, and retain information.
In addition to learning the material more deeply, spacing out your work helps stave off procrastination. Rather than having to face the dreaded project for four hours on Monday, you can face the dreaded project for 30 minutes each day. The shorter, more consistent time to work on a dreaded project is likely to be more acceptable and less likely to be delayed to the last minute. Finally, if you have to memorise material for class (names, dates, formulas), it is best to make flashcards for this material and review it periodically throughout the day rather than one long, memorisation session (Wissman and Rawson, 2012). Are you motivated to try distributed practice? Get started with and schedule with a good study timetable plan.
It’s Good to be Intense
Not all studying is equal. You will accomplish more if you study intensively. Intensive study sessions are short and will allow you to get work done with minimal wasted effort. Shorter, intensive study times are more effective than drawn-out studying.
In fact, one of the most impactful study strategies is distributing studying over multiple sessions (Newport, 2007). Intensive study sessions can last 30 or 45-minute sessions and include active studying strategies. For example, self-testing is an active study strategy that improves the intensity of studying and efficiency of learning. However, planning to spend hours on end self-testing is likely to cause you to become distracted and lose your attention.
On the other hand, if you plan to quiz yourself on the course material for 45 minutes and then take a break, you are much more likely to maintain your attention and retain the information. Furthermore, the shorter, more intense sessions will likely put the pressure on that is needed to prevent procrastination.
Silence Isn’t Always Golden
Know where you study best. Some people work best in silence, other people concentrate better with some background noise. Some people find that listening to classical music while studying helps them concentrate, while others find this highly distracting. Ambient music like Brian Eno's "Thursday Afternoon" works a treat for me. Generally, try not to listen to music that is distracting; often singing can be distracting. It might make a large or a small difference to how productively you study, but every little thing that you can optimise within reason will help.
Active studying isn't always silent as it often requires saying the material aloud or working with friends; please be considerate of others around you to minimise distractions if you are in a shared space like the library.
Problems Are Your Friend
Working and re-working problems is important for technical courses (e.g., math, economics). Be able to explain the steps of the problems and why they work.
In technical courses, it is usually more important to work problems than read the text (Newport, 2007). In class, write down in detail the practice problems demonstrated by the teacher. Annotate each step and ask questions if you are confused. At the very least, record the question and the answer (even if you miss the steps).
When preparing for tests, put together a large list of problems from the course materials and lectures. Work the problems and explain the steps and why they work (Carrier, 2003).
Reconsider Multitasking
A significant amount of research indicates that multi-tasking does not improve efficiency and actually negatively affects results (Junco, 2012).
In order to study smarter, not harder, you will need to eliminate distractions during your study sessions. Social media, web browsing, game playing, texting, etc. will severely affect the intensity of your study sessions if you allow them! Research is clear that multi-tasking (e.g., responding to texts, while studying), increases the amount of time needed to learn the material and decreases the quality of the learning (Junco, 2012).
Eliminating the distractions will allow you to fully engage during your study sessions. If you don’t need your computer for homework, then don’t use it. Use apps to help you set limits on the amount of time you can spend at certain sites during the day. Turn your phone off. Reward intensive studying with a social-media break (but make sure you time your break!)
Switch Up Your Setting
Know when and where you study best. You might work best early in the morning in your room; you might work best after a walk or a run. You might work worst late at night when you study on your bed... zzzzzZZZZZZ!
Become a Teacher
Try to explain the material in your own words, as if you are the teacher. You can do this in a study group, with a study partner, or on your own. Saying the material aloud will point out where you are confused and need more information and will help you retain the information. As you are explaining the material, use examples and make connections between concepts (just as a teacher does). It is okay (even encouraged) to do this with your notes in your hands. At first, you may need to rely on your notes to explain the material, but eventually, you’ll be able to teach it without your notes. The effort of this helps increase your ability to remember.
Try teaching someone else what you are studying, a classmate, a friend, a family member. The learning-by-teaching effect is well documented for its effectiveness; recent research has identified that the most effective version of this is teaching someone else without the benefit of study notes or a script. This is a result of the need to internalise the information (Jarret, 2018).
Creating a quiz for yourself will help you to think like your teacher. What does your teacher want you to know? Quizzing yourself is a highly effective study technique. Make a study guide and carry it with you so you can review the questions and answers periodically throughout the day and across several days. Identify the questions that you don’t know and quiz yourself on only those questions. Say your answers aloud. This will help you to retain the information and make corrections where they are needed. For technical courses, do the sample problems and explain how you got from the question to the answer. Re-do the problems that give you trouble. Learning the material in this way actively engages your brain and will significantly improve your memory (Craik, 1975).
Take Control Of Your Calendar
Controlling your schedule and your distractions will help you to accomplish your goals.
If you are in control of your calendar, you will be able to complete your assignments and stay on top of your coursework. The following are steps to getting control of your calendar:
On the same day each week, (perhaps Sunday nights or Saturday mornings) create your study plan for the week.
Go through each class and write down what you’d like to get completed for each class that week. Remember you have classwork set by the teacher, questions you have about your subjects, and revision.
Look at your calendar and determine how many hours you have to complete your work.
Determine whether your list can be completed in the amount of time that you have available. (You may want to put the amount of time expected to complete each task.) Find a balance between taking it too easy and working too hard -balance is key for academic success and your wellbeing. For example, if you find that it will take more hours to complete your work than you have available, you will likely need to make adjustments.
Pencil into your calendar when you plan to get assignments completed.
Before going to bed each night, make your plan for the next day. Waking up with a plan will make you more productive.
Use Downtime To Your Advantage
Beware of ‘easy’ weeks. This is the calm before the storm. Lighter work weeks are a great time to get ahead on work or to start long projects. Use the extra hours to get ahead on assignments or start big projects or explore what you are curious about in relation to set topics. You should plan to work on every class every week even if you don’t have anything due.
Reflect on your study time each day.
After each study session ask yourself the following questions:
How do I feel now that the study time is over? What motivated/didn’t motivate me during my study time? How can improve the chances of feeling good about studying next time?
What distracted me during study time? How did I manage my time/stay organised? What will I do better next time?
How did today’s study time help me become a better learner? What thinking tools or active study strategies did I practice during my study time? What tools will I use next time? (Cash, 2016)
Managing Changes to Your Study Practices
Learning how to use new study techniques is something that can be quick and easy, it can also be challenging and require reflection and planning to develop the new skill. A "Learning Sprint" is a process for managing the process and stages of learning a new skill. This involves setting goals, planning and reflecting. To download a worksheet that breaks down the process, choose one of the following links:
Explore the links below for additional supporting material to improve your study skills:
Learn about why and how to set great goals
Learn strategies to plan study and exam revision.
Learn metacognitive strategies to reflectively prepare for exams.
Learn strategies to cope better with the whole exam experience.
Learn strategies to capitalise on exam and assessment feedback.
Additional Resources for Teachers (and Adventurous Students):
RetrievalPracticeGuide.pdfCilck to download or visit the retrievalpractice.org website.
References
Agarwal, P.K., Roediger, H.L., McDaniel, M.A., and McDermott, K.B. (2020). How to Use Retrieval Practice to Improve Learning. Retrieved 1/09/2023, from http://pdf.retrievalpractice.org/RetrievalPracticeGuide.pdf.
Beyond Blue (2021).
Carrier, L. M. (2003). College students’ choices of study strategies. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 96(1), 54-56.
Cash, R. M. (2016). 10 Important Study Habits. Retrieved 19/05/2021, from https://www.nrichconsulting.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/10-Important-Study-Habits.pdf
Craik, F. I., & Tulving, E. (1975). Depth of processing and the retention of words in episodic memory. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 104(3), 268.
Davis, S. G., & Gray, E. S. (2007). Going beyond test-taking strategies: Building self-regulated students and teachers. Journal of Curriculum and Instruction, 1(1), 31-47.
Edwards, A. J., Weinstein, C. E., Goetz, E. T., & Alexander, P. A. (2014). Learning and study strategies: Issues in assessment, instruction, and evaluation. Elsevier.
Jarret, C., (2018). Learning by teaching others is extremely effective – a new study tested a key reason why. The British Psychological Society. Accessed 10 May 2021. https://digest.bps.org.uk/2018/05/04/learning-by-teaching-others-is-extremely-effective-a-new-study-tested-a-key-reason-why/
Junco, R., & Cotten, S. R. (2012). No A 4 U: The relationship between multitasking and academic performance. Computers & Education, 59(2), 505-514.
Mackenzie, A. M. (1994). Examination preparation, anxiety and examination performance in a group of adult students. International Journal of Lifelong Education, 13(5), 373-388.
McGuire, S.Y. & McGuire, S. (2016). Teach Students How to Learn: Strategies You Can Incorporate in Any Course to Improve Student Metacognition, Study Skills, and Motivation. Stylus Publishing, LLC.
Newport, C. (2006). How to become a straight-a student: the unconventional strategies real college students use to score high while studying less. Three Rivers Press.
Paul, K. (1996). Study smarter, not harder. Self Counsel Press.
Robinson, A. (1993). What smart students know: maximum grades, optimum learning, minimum time. Crown trade paperbacks.
Wissman, K. T., Rawson, K. A., & Pyc, M. A. (2012). How and when do students use flashcards? Memory, 20, 568-579.
This work is copied and adapted from The Learning Center, University of North Carolina. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 License. You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Learning Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill