By following these twelve tips, you’ll be guaranteed to get direct AAAAAs. Read each tip carefully.
1. Find a quiet area in your home where you feel comfortable and can isolate yourself from distractions. Make sure this space includes a chair, table or desk and enough lighting. Ask others not to disturb you while you’re in this special place, and turn off all phones, beepers, TVs, videos, music, or anything else your mind wanders instead of concentrating on schoolwork.
2. Find the best time to study. Some students tend to do their best work as soon as they get home from school while still in school mode. Others need a break and don’t start studying until after practice, recess, nap, dinner, and/or family time. Just make sure you give yourself plenty of time to get everything done and still get enough sleep each night.
3. Organize your day, week, month, etc. Set aside a specific time each day to do your homework and study. Decide on a reasonable minimum amount of time you will spend in this quiet place each day. For example, let’s say you decide that 45 minutes is a reasonable amount of time to spend on schoolwork each day. This means that even if the task is completed in the first 35 minutes, it will remain in this area and study or review notes for the next 10 minutes until the 45 are up.
4. Reward yourself for sticking to your schedule and being productive. Decide on an activity to do once you finish your study time. Plan to watch a TV show later in the evening. Tell yourself that you will play five minutes of a video game for every fifteen minutes you study. Create goals and their rewards before you start studying and work hard to achieve them every day.
5. Variety is important. Vary the topics you spend time studying. Eliminate the required homework first and then go back and spend the extra time reviewing material from different courses each day. If you spent extra time reviewing history yesterday, spend the extra time on science tonight. Some subject areas may require more time than others. You should have an idea of this about a month into the school year.
6. Study the difficult topics first and get them out of the way. You’ll be able to absorb material faster and make more connections when you’re mentally fresh.
7. Take regular study breaks. This can also serve as a mini-reward. For example, tell yourself that you are going to have a drink or snack or listen to a specific song after you finish recopying your science notes. Keep breaks short, 3-6 minutes or so, so you don’t get sidetracked or lose focus for the day.
8. Don’t just reread the notes or the text. Ask questions. Create flash cards. Redo tasks. Create time lines. Play games. Rewrite your notes. Have someone test you. Find websites online that review the same material. Make up questions that you think will be on the test. Create new outlines of the material by writing down some specific topics and filling in the details from memory. Studying should be an active process, not just time spent rereading something.
9. When you need to remember a group of terms, use the first letter of each to create a word (acronym) or a sentence (acrostic). For example, an easy way to remember the five Great Lakes is the word “HOMES.” Just by remembering the word “homes”, you can easily remember the names of the five Great Lakes. H stands for Huron, O for Ontario, M for Michigan, etc. You can also create silly sentences to help you remember long lists of terms. For example, remembering the sentence “Martha visits every Monday, she only stays until noon, period,” will help you remember the planets in the order they are found. M for Mercury, V for visits, E for Earth, etc.
10. Become a teacher. Find someone who is willing to listen to you, a classmate (this would be a great review for them), mom or dad, a sibling, the family dog, and explain your notes to them. Ask them (except the dog) to ask questions about the material that they themselves do not understand. It’s amazing how much you can retain when you have to teach someone material.
11. Repeat, repeat, repeat. The material should become second nature to you come test day. If not, you should spend more time preparing for the exam.
12. Exercise frequently and before sitting down to study. Research shows that students retain more after being physically active. Go to soccer practice, jog, play with your dog, sweat first, then relax and focus on your school work.
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