Study Skills
It can be easy to assume that students intrinsically know how to study information effectively, b that is often not the case. There is a lot of value in making sure these work habits are explicitly taught, not merely “caught.”
Consider asking students the following questions to enable them to self-assess their study skills and to give you valuable information about how to best instruct them:
Who taught you how to study?
How do you decide what to study next?
Do you ever come back to review the material after the class has ended?
What study methods do you usually use?
How do you know your preferred study methods work?
Study strategies to teach to students:
Low-stakes (or better yet—no-stakes) quizzes are one excellent way of having students practice retrieving information from their long-term memory. Continuing to periodically quiz students on skills they have learned throughout the year will solidify the knowledge in their long-term memories for many years to come.
Regardless of the method used, the goal is to strategically space the studying out so that the information is not altogether lost from memory but that students do need to work to remember the content. This is the “sweet spot” that optimizes the storage of information in long-term memory.
Any study strategy that does not require a student to actively think about or retrieve information tends to be relatively ineffective (this includes the very common studying approach of simply rereading notes or a textbook). Instead, teach students how to study in ways that require actual recall from their memory. This may include the following:
Delete or cover main concepts and terms from notes, then require yourself to fill in the blanks
Teach content to a mirror
Write down everything you know from memory, then compare it to your notes
Make flashcards of key content
Make a self test (better yet, have a friend do the same and switch tests)
A helpful guide in teaching students good note-taking techniques: How to Take Good Notes - The Dock for Learning
An overview to teach students to comprehend what they’re reading: How to Read: Improving Reading Comprehension - The Dock for Learning
Sources
Study Smarter and Harder by Chris Brode: Study Smarter and Harder - The Dock for Learning
