Developing Good Study Habits
Understanding the material you learn your classes is an active process. Studying takes on many forms. It involves learning and understanding material. Developing the following study skills can help you in your learning. You can modify these tips to help you in other school courses and in recreational activities.
Your Study Space
Organize your working area. The place where you study at home and at school should be tidy and organized. Papers, books, magazines, or pictures that are spread all over your working area will distract you from focusing on the work at hand.
Maintain a quiet study space. Make sure that the place where you study is removed from distractions such as the phone, stereo system, TV, friends, and brothers and sisters. Popular study spaces include the school library, the public library, and your bedroom at home (if it has a working area). Any quiet place where you can be productive will work.
Make sure you feel comfortable in your study space. You will be the most productive and study effectively if you are working in an area where you feel at case-personalize your space.
Be prepared with all the materials you will need. It is important that you have all your notebooks, textbooks, computer equipment, paper, pencil, pen, ruler, dictionary, thesaurus, and anything else you use for your work in your study space. If you have to continually get up to find a book or eraser, you won't be able to accomplish as much as you had hoped.
Study Habits
Prepare for class by reading material ahead of time. It is also helpful to read or view materials from other sources, such as science magazines, newspapers, the Internet, and television programs.
Take notes. To make note-taking easier, you may want to make up a shorthand method of recording ideas.
Review any notes you made in class the same day and add comments. Then have a friend or relative quiz you on the material in the notes. Reinforce your understanding by answering the questions in the textbook-even if they are not assigned.
Use your notes and the textbook to prepare summaries. Studying is most effective with a pen or pencil or your word processor, so you can write down the important ideas. You may want to write or type study cards to assist in making effective, point-form summaries of your notes. It's much more effective than learning material that is in paragraph form. Always try to condense the material you have to learn, disregarding sections that you think are unimportant.
Use graphic organizers to help you summarize a unit, or lesson. You may want to use unit summaries in the student resources.
"Practice makes perfect." This is as true for learning new material in school as it is for playing piano and shooting baskets. If you practice your study skills until they become almost automatic, you will have more time to think about how you will use them.
Schedule your study time. This will help you avoid that most ineffective of all study methods, "cramming" before assignments and tests. Use a daily planner and take it with you to every class. Write all homework assignments, tests, projects, and extra- curricular commitments in it. This will assist you in organizing a daily "To Do" list that will ensure maximum use of your time.
Know your strengths and your weaknesses. Take advantage of all opportunities to get help with areas in which you may have trouble. Use your strengths to help yourself and others. Form a study group and have regular meetings. You may be able to help others in some parts of the course. In turn, you may receive help from them.
Teach the material you have learned to someone who has not yet learned it. Their questions will help you see what areas of the subject you need to learn more about and what areas you don't completely understand.
Take study breaks. It is important that you set study goals and take a short study break after meeting each of the goals you set. For example, you could decide that you will take a study break after crossing two items off your "To Do" list. Taking study breaks will help you rejuvenate for the next tasks on your list and will assist you in completing all your work effectively and accurately.
Study Checklist