Before you can teach your students particular topics and concepts, you must ensure they have effective study skills.
Curriculum
8 Effective Study Skills
Before you can teach your students particular topics and concepts, you must ensure they have effective study skills.
Surprisingly, many students have never been actively taught study techniques. While teachers always focus on the content that needs to be acquired, sometimes too little time is spent teaching students essential study strategies.
Education resources
Read on for 8 effective study skills for students
Once students know how to study effectively, their attainment levels can soar. In addition, students feel more confident and able, which greatly impacts their motivation. As well as improving academic performance, successful student studying strategies can help students to feel happier in school.
We all have unique study habits, some of which may seem strange to others! Some people can only revise when they listen to music, while others retain knowledge best when they study late at night. Although students should be free to modify their study habits to maximize results, they should be taught key study skills. These are important for developing study habits and critical to academic success.
To help your students enhance their abilities and performance, look at this essential list of study skills.
1. Organization
Some people are naturally more organized than others, while others thrive in cluttered environments. However, being organized can assist greatly in studying and preparing for upcoming exams and assignments.
Students who are badly organized may frequently hand work in late or miss deadlines, even when they are capable of achieving a high grade. Students can ensure they have enough time to complete work, meet deadlines, and create schedules by working on their organizational skills.
You will want to emphasize time management when teaching your students organizational skills. Teaching time management will assist students who typically leave everything until the last minute and run out of time, but it will also help students who study too often and are at risk of burnout.
2. Note-taking
Students won’t remember everything covered in class, so note-taking is usually recommended. However, not all students are naturally gifted in this respect. Some will attempt to write down every word their teacher says, which might prevent them from focusing on the lesson.
Using study strategies, you can teach students how to take brief but informative notes. Identifying key concepts that will stimulate class memories is the key to successful note-taking, and it is a relatively easy skill to teach.
3. Reading
As students progress throughout the school, reading requirements increase significantly. In high school and college, students will be expected to read a significant amount of text quickly.
Reading is, perhaps, one of the most important study skills, so teachers must focus on this throughout the syllabus. Improving reading fluency and comprehension is essential if students are to succeed.
4. Writing
As the majority of exams and assessments are in written format, students need to be able to convert their thoughts into text. As well as teaching students how to write fluently and coherently, students should also learn how to write persuasively, informatively, descriptively, and creatively. Composing ideas, opinions, and answers into succinct paragraphs is a key writing study skill.
5. Concentration
The ability to concentrate is highly regarded, but it isn’t always easy to master. If students struggle to concentrate, they won’t learn as much, and they won’t be able to display their knowledge in assessments either. Helping students implement concentration strategies can revolutionize their studies and lead to higher achievement levels.
6. Test Preparation
Once students know how to prepare for a test, they can use their time more efficiently and enhance their performance. Practice using flashcards and playing memory games so that students can discover which methods work best for them. With exposure to varying preparation strategies, students can use a bespoke mix of methods to create their own custom test preparation routines.
7. Critical thinking
When students think critically, they can analyze an issue from various viewpoints and offer numerous solutions to problems. Throughout their academic careers, students will find that critical thinking becomes increasingly important, so it is a skill that should be honed as early as possible.
8. Listening
Listening may seem like an easy task, but active listening is rather more complex. Rather than passively hearing sounds wash over them, students need to be able to listen attentively and retain information. By learning to focus, drill down, and capture the most salient points of what is being presented, students can refine their listening skills and put them to good use.
Developing study skills
Learning how to study means trying various study strategies and finding the ones which work best for you. Just like we all learn differently, we all have individual studying preferences. Although students will not all study most effectively in the same ways, you can ensure your class has the tools they need to create their study routines.
By doing so, you will prepare your students for assignments and assessments they will take while in your class and ensure they are ready for the rigors of their future academic careers and working lives.
