It happens to everyone at some point. “What? The test is tomorrow?!”
Students have busy schedules and dropping the ball once or twice is
understandable. However, if you find that your student is consistently
working late at night to cram for a test or complete homework assignments
at the last minute, it’s time to get some help understanding how to
learn-to-learn. Planning how and when to study helps students reduce stress
and become more successful.
Learning-to-learn consists of skills that promote student success. All
students benefit from learning-to-learn skills, and it is especially
helpful for those students who seem to always be rushing to get things
done. Here are five simple but effective ways to help students manage their
own learning.
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Planning and Prioritizing.
Regardless of whether or not your school has an online assignment
portal, students benefit from writing down assignments for the week
and making daily to-do lists. A planner provides a tactile-visual
of the week and helps students focus on the information they need
to manage their time. Time management is key to succeeding in
school: planning study times for tests or chunking assignments into
manageable pieces, planning, organizing and prioritizing are skills
needed to be successful in school and beyond. -
Spacing and Interleaving. Practice is widely accepted
as an important factor in learning. How and when students practice is a key
component for easily recalling information from long-term memory. Spacing
study sessions over four to five days makes it more likely that students
will remember the information when it’s time to take the test. Interleaving
improves long-term learning because students mix multiple subjects or
topics while they study. For example, students can cycle through several
topics doing some math, some science and some history and then cycle back
through the topics in a different order. Interleaving forces the brain to
continually retrieve information because each practice attempt is different
from the last, so rote responses pulled from short-term memory won’t work. -
Knowing what I don’t know. One reason that comes up
over and over again in conversations with students about why they didn’t
ask for help is that often “they don’t know what they don’t know.” Knowing
what you don’t know takes effortful studying. Effortful studying includes
completing the review guides from memory and taking note of those questions
that could not be answered. That is the information students should study
… that’s the information they don’t know. -
Effortful studying. Effortful studying is using active
strategies that rely on students “doing” and produces better results than
passive strategies like reading and rereading textbook and notes or
flipping through flashcards. Effortful studying means revising classroom
notes by turning them into outlines or graphic organizers. Explaining
concepts to others is one of the best ways for students to show they know
material – “you can’t explain your thinking if you don’t know the
material.” Effortful studying is not just making flashcards but using them
in active ways like playing the “memory game” or grouping the cards into
categories to show how the information is linked. -
Self-Advocacy. There are no “dumb” questions except the
“un-asked” question. When students struggle with a question in the homework
or review guides it signals the need to ask for help from peers, teachers
or parents. Students sometimes struggle to understand their needs and how
to communicate them to others; therefore, it’s important for the adults
around them to ensure they understand when to ask for help. Self-advocacy
is a life-long skill that takes practice and it is never too early to
begin. The first step in learning this skill is to know one’s strengths and
weaknesses, use a planner to organize study times, use active learning
strategies to learn – not memorize – and see help-seeking as a
positive strategy. It is what active learners do … and nothing says that
you are an active learner more than asking for help.
