“I need to study for my test”, I would say to myself. With self-discipline I sat at the card table that was my desk at home in my high school years, textbook and class notes in front of me, and engaged in the mystery of studying. Mystery, I say now almost 60-years after high school graduation, because the act and art of studying was so elusive, I might as well have been told to flap my arms and fly. With little understanding of what it meant to study, I waddled through years of school tests relying on what I heard and observed in class and my reading of the assigned texts. And so it goes still. Last week I heard and saw a high school student in our high school library, as I prepared for a school board meeting, say to friends, “I need to study for my test. I wish I knew what to do!”.
I ask my readers to consider this article through the eyes and ears of a student in school. Too many students throw up their hands in defeat repeating the last sentence in the first paragraph. All students need us to teach them how to be successful in school. Teaching them what will be on a test is important; teaching them how to study for a test is just as important.
The quick answer to “How should I study?” is that we need to teach all students to
- Listen and pay attention in class
- Build short-term memory through repetition
- Read aloud
- Focus on key words and ideas
- Master automaticity of key facts
- Understand what the problem wants you to do
- Speak your solutions out loud
- Study frequently
Listen and Pay attention
School, study and learning have gone hand-in-hand forever. In the first instance, children are told to pay attention to what their teachers says and does daily. Listen and watch, listen and watch – these two aspects of paying attention are a child’s first pass at learning. Remarkably, children learn a lot just from listening and watching. I was told as a student, “If you just pay attention in class, listen to your teacher, with a special focus on what the teacher writes on the board (now digital screen), you can pass every class”. I also learned that the bar for passing classes was not very high – just attend school and pay attention.
In the second instance, if a student wants better than passing grades, a student must do more. If being present and listening to and watching what a teacher says and does can result in a D grade or better, what does a student need to do be earn even better grades? Study. Here we go.
What to do: When you tell students to pay attention, mean it. Get their attention. Don’t proceed until you have it. Too often we say “Now, pay attention” and then proceed without getting their attention.
What to do: When you tell students to “add this to your notes” check their notes. If they wrote down the wrong things, they will study the wrong things. If it is important enough to tell them to write it down, ensure that they wrote it down.
Short-term Memory
Short-term memory counts because most tests assess short periods of learning. Quizzes assess the smallest amount learning. Chapter or unit tests, think four weeks of learning, are the most common school assessments. Semester and end-of-year tests by their nature assess the most important ideas and skills learned in 18 and 36 weeks. Annual state tests cover learning over multiple years, usually going back at least two years. Knowing this, short-term memory is the first key to studying for most tests.
Short-term memory is all about repetition. Repetitive practice does not make perfect, as people want to believe, but it does make what is repeated permanent. The brain needs reinforcement if we want it to remember something and the more often, we say or do the same thing, the more likely the brain will remember it. When a child listens and watches the teacher, the brain gets an initial introduction to information, but it is not enough if we want the brain to remember that information for very long.
As a rule, when you think short-term memory think 5 to 7 repetitions. Re-read the assigned information multiple times. A chapter in a text or a book the class is reading or the handouts or a screen shot that was shown since a last chapter or monthly test is what will be on the next chapter or monthly test. This information is what a student needs to re-read and re-look at multiple times. If it helps, make chicken scratches on a bookmark for every time you read re-read this information. Get to at least 5 preferably 7 scratch marks. If your brain has 5 to 7 repetitions of the same material, your brain will be prepared to answer questions about this material on an assessment.
What to do: Use class time to practice short-term memory. “We are going to take five minutes for you to read that paragraph (word list, vocabulary definitions…) at least five times to yourself. Start now.” If you want students to know information, show them how and give them time, your time, to know it.
Re-read Aloud
One more step – read it aloud. It is too easy to just skim over the pages when you read it silently. Your eyes move but your brain does not engage. Reading aloud means the brain must see and you must say every word. Too many of us say, “I already read it. I don’t need to waste time reading it again”. However, reading once is not enough to create adequate short-term memory. Read it again and read it aloud.
What to do: Once again, do it in class. Students can read aloud with soft voices. Spread them out around the room and use all your square footage. Then, listen to students as they read aloud. Nod, smile, and reinforce.
Focus on What the Teacher Focuses On
Teachers give students clues about what is MOST important in the lessons they teach. Most teachers tell their classes, “Write this down” or “Add this to your notes”. Then they write or display the most important words or ideas in the current lesson on the board or screen. If a teacher writes it, a student should also write it. And write it exactly as the teacher writes it. Treat these words and ideas like a giant billboard with flashing lights that tell you “Know this because it will be on the test”.
If a student’s notes only show what a teacher writes on the board or screen, that student has a start in preparing for the next test. Build understanding from these key words and ideas. If it is a word, define it – know what the word means. If it is an idea, write several sentences about how the idea was explain in class. For example, if the word is “germinate”, define it. If the idea is “growing season”, write down an example of a growing season and what happens over time.
Then, build these definitions and examples into short-term memory with 5 to 7 repetitions.
Listen and pay attention, copying key words and ideas, re-reading aloud and doing these things 5 to 7 times builds good short-term memory in language arts, social studies, most of science, second languages,
What to do: Interview students. Simply ask each student to “Tell me what you know about…”. Formative assessments are not always quizzes. A quick oral interview of a cross section of students will tell you if instruction has been successful in causing learning.
What to do: Teach students to self-interview. “What do I know about…?”, is a question a student can use as a studying check-up.
Math is Different
There is only so much that short-term memory can achieve in arithmetic and math. In the primary grades, teachers work to create automaticity of facts. Consider the tables students memorize and the urgency for knowing these facts on demand. The clearest example is a multiplication table. Repetition and short-term memory allow a student to quickly call out 63 when asked to multiply 7 times 9. All students need to achieve automaticity mastery of math facts.
This is not short-term memory but long-term memory work. To build long-term memory students need 17-20 repetitions and then frequent repetitions over time. What does this mean? Teachers and students hammer the drill and practice with intensity. Repeatedly until short-term memory cannot help but answer 63 to the 7 x 9 question. AND, then repeated practice frequently but not intensely over time. That means next week and next month.
What to do: On demand and without fanfare ask a student to tell you their addition or multiplication or division tables. Make the telling oral so that it quick fire. Do this over time with all students to reinforce long-term memory.
Know the Language of Math by Writing Math Sentences
Once math facts are secure, math learning is all about understanding the language of a math problem. What does the math language of the problem tell you to do? Without fail, some students read the text of a math story problem or look at the numerics of a math problem and do not know what the language of the problem is telling them to do. The have not learned to read the language of math; math is Greek to too many children. Because students can read text, we assume they can read math, and this is not a leap we should make.
As always, demonstrate and over-demonstrate the skills of interpreting English sentences into math sentences by visibly interpreting the words or numbers into “math sentences”. Do this each time a new math concept is taught. “This is how you read the math problem and we will write each step of the problem into a math sentence.” Once students learn to do this, the mystery of story problems is resolved.
What to do: Each time you make a math assignment, demonstrate how to interpret the language of the problem into math sentences. Say it aloud and write it on the board/screen.
What to do: When circulating around the class while students do their assignment, don’t look for right answers/current solutions. Ask students to tell you their math sentences. This is the skill that gets them to the right answers.
The Template for Short Answers and Essays
Most quizzes and tests use multiple choice, true-false, and fill in the information questions. These are easier to correct. They also are easier to turn into the data of learning as the number of correct answers seems to equate to learning. Given the factual nature of most multiple questions, m-c is a test of memory.
Many students frown when the test or quiz requires short answers or essays. In multiple choices and fill in type questions, a correct answer or information leading to a correct answer is displayed in the problem stem. This is not always true in short answers or essays.
Once again we teach students to write short answers and essays by teaching them how with frequent demonstrations. How often has a student heard a teacher say, “You should have learned how to write an essay back in grade xxx”. If the teacher has to say this, she already knows that a student did not learn how to write an essay back then. We need to fill this gap in learning.
Additionally, an essay written in fifth grade will not satisfy the requirements for an essay in 8th or 11th grade. We expect more sophisticated thinking in essay answers as students get older. We need to teach students what “more sophisticated” looks like by providing models, requiring short answer and essay writing in daily and chapter work, and, here it is, providing ungraded, critical feedback to students about their writing. Ungraded and critical feedback takes the pressure off students for on-demand writing and incrementally develops writing strength.
The starting point is for each student to understand a five-part essay template: introduction sentence, three supporting sentences, and a concluding sentence. Just like math facts and vocabulary definitions, students need an immediate response to an essay assignment. They immediately begin an outline of five parts.
What to do: Have faculty agreement in a five-part essay template. Remove the mystery of how to write an essay or short answer.
What to do: Write essays frequently. Remove the on-demand paralysis by making writing essays a general practice.
What to do: Essay practice should be like basketball practice; we don’t keep score in practice sessions. Instead, give critical feedback on how the clarity of each part of the essay, the strength of the supporting information, and the interpretation of the conclusion. Build essay muscle.
Cramming is Guilt Studying
Lastly, keep students from doing what what I did. Cramming for tests is a student’s attempt to resolve guilt for not doing the daily and weekly practices that build readiness for school tests. If we teach and build study habit practices into usual teaching and learning, there is no need for cramming. All the above is designed for daily, weekly and repeated practice.
What to do: If it is important that students learn to study, teach them how to study.
The Big Duh!
There should be no surprises in school tests. All information and skills should be clearly taught and practiced so that a test is a natural wrap-up to what has been taught and learned.
Equally, there should be no mystery in how to study. Every student should be taught independent study skills just as they are taught their A, B, Cs. When we accept that study habits are not innate but are learned practices we teach students, then we are the right track of causing every student to become a strong learner.