How to Study for a Test
When & Where
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Regular time
Regular place
Quiet
Organized
Few distractions: no TV, phone, games, etc.
Daily…review notes for entire unit/chapter
Gaps
• Look for gaps…things you don’t understand
• Use your book to help fill in your gap notes
• Have a study buddy’s contact info so can
call/text to ask questions
• Ask your teacher the next day
How much
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Multiple nights
No cramming just the night before
Short bursts with breaks
20 min maximum for each burst
We tend to remember what we study 1st & last
Night before: read through all materials at least
once
• Right before: skim through notes if given time
Memorization Strategies
Flashcards
• Great for large amounts of information
• Need to be concise (to the point)
• As study them, stack into 3 piles: ‘ones I know’, ‘ones I
kind of know’, ‘ones I don’t know’
• Continue to read through the ‘kind of know’ & ‘ones I
don’t know’ & add to the ‘ones I know’ pile as you
learn
• Once have them all in the ‘ones I know’ pile, read
through all of them again to double-check
• If needed repeat the process
• Also great to carry with you to practice, dinner, on the
bus, etc.
Mnemonic Strategies
Mnemonic Devices
• Any learning technique that
helps you remember facts
• Connects the information
you are trying to learn with
something simpler or
familiar to you
• Example: Arable. Break it
down to you “are able” to
grow things.
Acronyms
• Make a word from the 1st
letter of each word to be
memorized
• Example: HOMES to
remember the 5 Great
Lakes of Huron, Ontario,
Michigan, Erie, Superior
• Activity: List 2 Acronyms
and what they stand for
Strategies
Acrostics
• Make phrases/sentences in
which the 1st letter of each
word works as a cue to help
recall the words you are
trying to remember
• Example: Please excuse my
dear Aunt Sally to
remember math order of
operations (PEMDAS)
• Activity: Using your vocab
words, create 2 acrostics
Narrative
• Make up a story with the list
of words throughout the
story
• The more ridiculous or silly,
the easier it is to remember
• Example: Next slide
Narrative Example
• Word List: Rustler, Penthouse, Mountain, Sloth, Tavern,
Fuzz, Gland, Antler, Pencil, Vitamin
• Narrative: A Rustler lived in a Penthouse on top of a
Mountain. His specialty was the three toed Sloth. He
would take his captive animals to a Tavern where he
would remove Fuzz from their Glands. Unfortunately,
all this exposure to sloth fuzz caused him to grow
Antlers. So he gave up his profession and went to work
in a Pencil factory. As a precaution he also took a lot of
Vitamin E.
• Activity: Using as many vocab words as you can
(minimum of 5), create a short story
Strategies
Rhymes
• Make up rhyming words or
songs related
• Examples:
– In 1492, Columbus sailed the
ocean blue.
– 50 States Song
http://m.youtube.com/watch
?v=uUFeVKeKRQc
– Activity: Use 2 of your
vocab words to rhyme with a
clue of their meaning
Mental Pictures
• Make up a picture in your
head or on paper about the
topic that you can later
picture in your head
• Example: French word ‘pain’
means bread so picture a
loaf of bread screaming in
pain when you eat it
• Activity: Using one vocab
word, create an image
Studying for Math
• Math takes practice
• Best way to practice is by doing problems
• Multiple step problems:
– If you can do when someone walks you through it, you
only partially know it
– If you can do when you look at the steps in your
notes/book, you only partially know it
• Figure out which step you get caught on
• Practice more problems
– If you can do ALL the steps without any assistance, then
you are likely to know it
– Try explaining how to do it to someone else; if you can
teach it to someone else then it’s much more likely you
know it
From the Psychological Science
in the Public Interest Journal
• Here are the 5 study skills that Dunlosky and team
found to be the most effective:
• Elaborative interrogation: Answering why a fact is true
• Self-explanation: Explaining what a section of text or
an example problem means to you
• Practice testing: Testing yourself on the material you
are trying to learn
• Distributed practice: Spreading your studying out over
several sessions
• Interleaved practice: Mixing different kinds of
problems together when studying
Handout
QUESTIONS