Study Smarter

What Can I Do To Get An A?

We all want quick answers to this big question, but while there is no quick fix, there are some best responses! 

 Retrieval Practice! Stop Multitasking!

Ways to do retrieval practice:

• Make up a practice test or quiz!

• Flashcard shuffle (on the MAC website)!  

• You and a friend can quiz each other!

• Teach the content to someone!

• Study the content as a 'story with details'!

• Summarize your notes!

• Mind-Mapping! (on the MAC website)! 

• Say it out loud! Self-talk rehearsal!

Need help with note-taking? Have questions about the ways to do Retrieval Practice? Ask us! Come to the MAC!

What did you do that helped you learn? What will you do differently from here on out? 

Read more from the original article here.

5 Surefire Study Methods for Success 

1. Preview/Review

Previewing and reviewing tells you where you’ve been and where you are going. Getting an overview before diving into a subject and summarizing are two principles that frame the ‘big picture’. If you practice reading summaries and skimming the material as you begin, you’ll know what to expect during a study session. Take a few minutes after you study to write down what you have learned-this practice will reinforce your understanding.The Cornell note-taking template is a good example of note-taking organization and summarizing material. Go to https://sites.google.com/marist.com/big-mac/home and click on Note-taking skills. 

2. Test Making

Make up test questions during and after studying. By doing this, you learn to pick out the important facts and reinforce what you’ve studied. If you have ‘questions about your questions’, seek clarification from your teacher. Keeping questions about the material may slow you down initially, this practice will save you time and in the long run you won’t have to go back through your textbook. Find a peer in class that will also create questions, exchange, and alternate answering questions. 

3. Underlining

Underlining or highlighting material in textbooks can be helpful, be careful not to just highlight everything! Underlining is effective for three reasons: 

• First, it helps you focus on what’s important. If you underline everything… you are wasting your time. Select a summary sentence of the paragraph, the main fact statements, and important supporting material. Underline what you want to remember and what you think may be on tests. 

• Second, underlining helps you maintain active learning. By underlining, you are taking an active role in studying, so you will less likely be passively reading through material and miss important points. 

• Third, underlining helps you review. If you have points highlighted, you can quickly review what you’ve studied. 

4. Outlining

When you outline, you force yourself to restate only the important material and you are still taking an active role. Often students rely on reviewing notes and outlines prior to a test. A disadvantage of outlining is patience for a student since it is time-consuming. Students do report the actual physical act of writing important material helps with long-term retention. 

5. Pretend To Be A Teacher 

Imagine you are teaching a class and have to teach the information you’ve learned in your own words. This is one of the best ways to pinpoint the material you’ve understood and reveal concepts that need more work. Teach the material to anyone that will listen…the dog, your parents, your sister/brother. If you can teach it accurately, fluently, in your own words, you know it!

Develop a Study Plan 

Click on this link!

See Ms. Seraydarian or Mrs. Carroll in the MAC if you have questions! All the strategies in the google doc can be found on this MAC website: Study Smarter, Time Management, Organizational Skills.

3 Methods of Studying

Strategy #1   SQ3R

SQ3R is a comprehension strategy that helps students think about the text they are reading while they’re reading. Often categorized as a study strategy, SQ3R helps students ‘get it’ the first time they read a text by teaching students how to read and think like an effective reader. The strategy including the following 5 steps:

• Survey- Students review the text to gain initial meaning from the headings, bolded text, and charts.

• Question-Students begin to generate questions about their reading from previewing it.

• Read-As students read, they need to look for answers to the questions they formulated during their preview of the text. These questions, based on the structure of the text, help focus students’ reading.

• Recite-As students move through the text they should recite or rehearse the answers to their questions and make notes about their answer for later studying.

• Review-After reading, students should review the text to answer lingering questions and recite the questions they previously answered.

Strategy #2  PQ4R

Another study strategy that helps you digest the information you’re reading. This approach has 6 steps:

• Preview- Skim the material. Read the titles, headings, and other highlighted text.

• Question-Think through the questions that pertain to the material.

• Read- As you work through the material, try to find answers to your questions.

• Reflect-Consider whether you have any unanswered questions or new questions.

• Recite- Speak aloud about the things you just read.

• Review-Look over the material one more time.

Strategy #3  THIEVES

There are 7 pre-reading steps to studying.

• Title- Read the title

• Headings-Look through the headings.

• Introduction-Skim the intro.

• Every first sentence in a section-Take a look at how each section begins

• Visuals and vocabulary-Look at the pictures and the words in bold print.

• End questions-Review the questions at the end of the chapter.

• Summary-Read the overview of the text.

Spaced Practice & Mix-Up Practice

Why Spaced Practice and Mixed-Up Practice Yields Best Results 

While practice is vital to learning and memory, studies have shown that practice is far more effective when it’s broken into separate periods of training that are spaced out. This takes more effort, and most students believe they learn better with massed practice. Cramming for tests is an example of massed practice. Cramming may get you through a test, but it will be long forgotten by the time of the end-of-term exam. Spacing out your practice may feel less productive. What you don’t sense at the moment is that the added effort is making the learning stronger. 

Spaced practice, for durable learning,requires time for mental rehearsal and the processes of consolidation, where new learning is strengthened, given meaning, and connected to prior knowledge, for long term memory. This happens over hours and several days. 

Spaced practice works better. 

• In a test given after the sessions, surgical students whose lessons were spaced out a week apart outperformed their colleagues. Other students scored lower on all measures when four study sessions were crammed in a single day. Practice current and prior knowledge. 

• The idea is that the better your mastery, the less frequent the practice. A deck of flashcards can provide an example of spacing, Sebastian Leitner developed the Leitner Box- a series of four file car boxes. In the first are study materials that must be practiced frequently because you often make mistakes in them, In the second box are the cards you’re pretty good at, and that box gets practiced less often. The cards in the third box are practiced less often than those in the second box, and so on. If you mess up you move the card up a box.

• Varied practice helps engage the brain in different ways. Practicing all the same problems, for example 20 problems that are the same, is not realistically how you see it on a test. The problems on a test are unpredictable, and out of sequence.. Many students should be practicing a variety of problems. For learning to have value, the student must be adept at discerning, “What kind of problem is this?” so you can select and apply an appropriate solution. Keep practicing fundamentals from time-to-time, so you stay sharp, and change it up in practice!

Retrieval Practice

Strategies for Success at Home:

1. Find a place where you do your work as a student (your job) AND NOTHING ELSE. You need a routine workspace. This could be your desk in your room or the kitchen table. It needs to be somewhere where you can be self-disciplined to be focused on work. 

a. DOs- In the workspace are all materials a student needs:  laptop, charger, lighted area, pens/pencils, paper. The area needs to be away from distractions. Put the phone away before you sit down in the workspace.

The ideal amount of time to focus is 20 minutes. Taking a 5 minute break then resets your focus and attention, allowing your brain to be far more effective. This helps tremendously when you are setting up a homework/study schedule.

b. DON’Ts: Don’t browse the internet for fun to pass the time, don’t watch youtube videos, don’t watch Netflix, don’t play on your phone, don’t text. You want this spot to be YOUR WORK spot! If you have trouble with eliminating distractions while on your computer, try 'forest'. It is an extension on Chrome that will allow you to focus for 25 minutes while also blocking the 'distractions'. (Forest app)

Your eyes are are connected to your cognition. Simply put: if you are looking at it, your brain is thinking about it. So, you must have your eyes ON THE GOOGLE MEET that your class is currently in. If you are looking at a jersey on amazon, or an email from a friend, or another assignment, or a youtube video, your brain is thinking about those things.

2. Find a study buddy for each class. You can compare notes with this study buddy, not just ‘get’ notes from someone. This is an effective form of studying. You can also confirm due dates and expectations of assignments with the study buddy. 

3. Take ownership of your learning. If you don't understand the content, you need to communicate that information and ask for help. Attending tutorial via your teacher's google meet links is a great way to ask for clarification, more practice on a topic, check in, etc. 

Last Week of  the Term   Exam Plan, Calendar,  and Study Tips for Finals   

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1L8E5fZyYRp0gvA-HXf1sdF2MGs-z9TFD/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=112467840260139559081&rtpof=true&sd=true 

Combat the "fear of the unknown" by gathering all of your exam information into one place. It's an Exam Organizer! Click here.

The Best Study Technique for Tests and Exams- Self-Testing! Click on the link below to learn about Student Self-Testing!https://takinglearningseriously.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Self-Testing-Tip-Sheet-STUDENTS.pdf