Study Kit
One of the most important skills that students should master is how to study. A person who knows how to study will not only do well at all phases of his education, but will be able to make his entire life an opportunity for learning. Good study skills involve acquiring the discipline of studying and learning useful tools such as reading for information, taking notes, drilling, and memorizing.
The first step is developing good study habits. Study takes time. Students should practice studying for longer stretches as they mature. They should also learn the habit of starting early and working regularly. Thus, if they must learn the content of a book, they should begin the first day the assignment is given. They should plan how much they will have to study each day to reach their goal. The daily assignment for such a study plan is an example of a short-term goal. Learning how to set short-term goals takes practice. In the beginning the teacher should guide students in this process. The student should consider that he is making a contract with himself. He should set his goals carefully and do his best to reach each daily goal. Integrity in using one's time is an important life skill.
Another important study habit is to choose the best conditions for study. Most students study best in a quiet room at an uncluttered table or desk. However, some people study better with music or sitting on a couch. A student should identify his best environment for study. The teacher may have to guide the student to find a good study environment at first, but over time the student should learn the discipline of setting up his own area for study. Identify the best environment for your student using the Study Inventory below.
Beginning in the elementary grades a student can begin using various study methods so that they become easy to use. By high school, he should be able to identify which method would be most useful in a certain situation. Here is a description of several study methods and how to teach them.
Reading for Information
Reading for information is the first tool to teach young students. This method will also enhance reading comprehension, which is required on many standardized tests. You will need a yellow highlighting pen and a short article from an encyclopedia. The article can be copied from a book or printed from a computer encyclopedia. The goal is to be able to identify the important information in the article. Ask the students to pretend that they will be tested on the content of the article. Instruct them to read the article and highlight any information that they think would be on the test. They should highlight key vocabulary words and their definitions, important numbers such as sizes or dates, and important places and people. After the student highlights the article, check his work. Make sure that he has not highlighted unnecessary material. Usually a topic sentence and three or four key words or numbers are sufficient for a single paragraph. Some topic sentences are not even required if a student considers the topic self-apparent, for example: "There are many kinds of rocks." However, key words in a rock article, such as sedimentary, igneous, and metamorphic would be important to highlight. Explain that the purpose of highlighting is to enable a student to go back and study an article or book without having to read every word again.
Learning How to Take Notes
The next skill that should be learned is taking notes. This skill is useful for reviewing important material for a test and for preparing to write a research paper. Notes can be taken from written sources or lectures. The easiest way to practice this skill is to start with a written source. Use the highlighted article from your first study lesson. You will need a pack of lined index cards and a pen or pencil. On the first index card, the student should record the name of the article and author if known. Next, instruct the student to copy each piece of important information to a different index card. This may seem wasteful, but the advantage is that the various facts can be reviewed randomly for studying for a test, or shuffled into a logical order for writing a research paper. (If the cards are used for research purposes, the first card that identifies the source should be assigned a number and all cards taken from that source should be labeled with that number.) Students should practice taking notes using material that is assigned in school. History and science easily lend themselves to this form of taking notes. Encourage students to keep index cards with them whenever they read. They can use them to write an interesting fact or record vocabulary words that they would like to learn.
As a student becomes more adept at taking notes, he can graduate to outlining notes on a single piece of paper. The goal of recording an outline is the same as for note cards; however, outlining allows the student to record the logical sequence of the material. For example, a student reading an article on rocks (see subpage below) might have three note cards with the three types of rocks and their definitions. In contrast, the student who outlined the article on rocks would have this outline (see subpage below).
The best way to teach outlining is to model it for your students as you teach them a subject in school. Read from a science or history text and stop frequently to outline what you have just read on a white board. Instruct the students to copy what you have written. Practice outlining in this way until you think the student can outline without your example. To graduate to the next step, read the material and stop to verbally tell the students what they should write in their outlines. (This process will take a long time, so be patient. Some children cannot advance beyond this point until about twelve years of age.)
Give students plenty of opportunities to try their hands at outlining. Students can try outlining sermons, news magazine articles, documentaries and assigned texts. They can advance from outlining under the teacher's direction, to outlining a written article by themselves, and finally to outlining a lecture. Since the pace of a lecture can be daunting, try sitting beside your student and allowing him to copy your outline as he listens. An important distinction should be made: this type of outlining has a different purpose from the type of outlining used to construct an essay or research paper. The goal is to record important information for future reference, rather than creating a unified thesis (as in an essay.) Students should not get frustrated if they cannot record every idea in a lecture. Instead they should focus on recording the information that they will want to remember later. Sometimes recording the organizational structure of a lecture is important; at other times an outline may look more like a list. Discuss lectures with your student to see if he was able to take adequate notes from a lecture. The discussion will also help him to understand how useful notes can be.
Drilling Key Material
Another important study tool is learning how to drill key material. Certain subjects, such as math, contain information that must be recalled rapidly. A good student learns how to create his own drills. Homeschool Tools has dozens of tools for drills: math facts, history dates, Greek and Latin roots, etc. These drills can be printed for instant use. Beyond such basics, however, a student should learn how to identify the material he must drill. For example, a student who is studying for the SAT may have his personal list of vocabulary words he wants to drill. A simple way to drill a long list such as this is to fold a piece of paper length-wise. On the left side write the word, and on the right side write the definition. Fold the paper and drill the word list, only looking at the answers as necessary. A student who is studying for the American History AP Exam may have important dates to learn. Index cards can be used to create a drill. The student can record the date on one side and the event on the reverse side. A third drill tool is to make an erasable worksheet. For example, a student who must learn the formulas for volume and surface area of solid objects would write on a piece of paper:
Volume of a Sphere =
Surface Area of a Sphere =
Volume of a Rectangular Prism =
Surface Area of a Rectangular Prism =
Volume of a Rectangular Pyramid =
Surface Area of a Rectangular Pyramid =
and so on...
The paper would be placed in a clear plastic page protector. Each day the student would drill the formulas by writing the answers with a dry-erase pen.
Memorization
Some material must be memorized, but not in a drill format. Poetry, the Bill of Rights, the Presidents of the United States, and the books of the Bible are examples. The best study tool for such material is simple repetition. The teacher can say each phrase and have the students echo her words until they can recite the material by themselves. Students also benefit from illustrating (especially for younger children) and copying. Older students can use memorization tricks for lists. With a little creativity you can take the first letter of each word and make a word or a sentence. Younger children also enjoy singing the material to be memorized. Homeschool Tools has set the countries by continent to folk tunes. Many people have learned the books of the Bible or the names of the apostles using songs.
Students who use the full range of study tools will have an advantage when they tackle a new subject. They will know how to make the best use of their study time. They will be able to identify which method would help them in their studies. They will also have good study habits. "How to Study" is perhaps the best lesson any student could ever learn!
Homeschool Tools Examples of Study Tools: (See the site map to find these forms.)
Developing Good Study Habits:
Student Study Contract
Daily Goal Chart for Student Study Contract
Assignment Sheets:
Subject Assignment
Weekly Assignment
Record of Books Read
Homeschool Notebook
Scheduling Sheets
Taking Notes:
Rock Article and Outline
Fact sheets to be filled out for:
Presidents
States
Book Report Form
Drills:
Math Facts: Work sheets and Flash Cards
Famous People and Times History Game (Drill Cards)
Phonics
Spelling Assignment Form
Drills for Improving Speech
Greek and Latin Roots
Latin Conjugations and Declensions
Memorization:
Geography: Countries, States and Capitals
Bible Verses
Spelling Rules
Patriotic Songs and Quotes
Famous Speeches
Hymn Collection
Poetry Collection
Vocabulary, Bible Verses and Songs in French, Spanish, and German
The Bill of Rights
Presidents
Greek and Roman Mythological Figures
Constellations