Here is a great video from a veteran school teacher on what he wishes his students knew – or, how to study!

See our other posts on how to take notes

Tips for taking better notes

Note Taking Methods

Split-Page Method
Cornell Method
Outline Method

Excellent video on Cornell Note Taking

It’s a popular misconception that you can’t really study for math.  People who say you can’t will admit that you can do math assignments and math homework.  But actually studying it–looking at material in order to better on tests and upcoming assignments–that, they say, is impossible.

They’re wrong.  It’s true that studying math is different from studying any other class.  After all, math is about more than just remembering certain facts.  But it is something that you can study for–and studying will get you better grades, just as in any other course.

Think of it like sports.  It’s true that you can’t get good at basketball by memorizing facts, like you can in a science class.  But you can get good by combining learning with a schedule of continuing practice.  This is the way study for a math class or test works.  You study by learning the facts–and then spending hours trying to work problems for yourself, learning the methods and formulas that you’ve been studying.

On average, with most class tests or classes, you should put in two hours of your personal time for every hour that you meet in your math class.  Research has shown that what differentiates the good math student from the bad is not how willing they are to practice the principles they’ve learned, but how willing they are to do it, whether they like it or not. Again, that’s as true of math as it is of sports.  If you are preparing for an exam like the AFQT, HSPT or SSAT, you will need to put in more time.

Here are some other tips that you should keep in mind:

1) Review right after class. Getting math facts that you’ve just newly learned into your long-term memory is tough.  Immediate review, I.e., studying right after you’ve been exposed to the new fact, is more effective than if you review it a day or two or more later.  This is one reason that it’s smart to do your homework and related review activities immediately after your class, or no more than a few hours later.  It helps you remember things better.

2) Don’t try to multitask while studying math. This might work while you’re reading for a history or science course, but it rarely works for math. To truly master new formulas and principles, your brain has to be fully engaged in the math that’s in front of you.  This means no talking on the phone, no watching TV, and no listening to anything except soft background music.

3) Follow this formula while learning math: Read it, recite it, do it with notes, do it without notes.  Let’s examine that a bit closer.  First, read the new math concept that you’re learning–let’s say division by negative numbers.  Next, recite it.  Pretend like you’re a teacher, trying to explain to students how to divide by negative numbers. How would you explain it.  Keep reviewing the material until you’re able to explain it without referring to your notes.  Third, DO some problems, while looking at notes.  Usually your notes will explain a step-by-step process, so follow this process closely as you work on a few division-of-negative-numbers problems.  And finally, after you’re doing these with confidence, give up the notes and try them on your own.

4) Finally, as with any other studying, take frequent breaks. If math is not your subject, you might need more or more frequent breaks than with other classes–because math can really tax your mental faculties.  So don’t stress yourself.  Study at comfortable intervals, and then relax for a few minutes, and then start again.

This method will show you that, not only can you study for math courses and tests, but you can study in such a way that your grade will benefit.

Scrap booking as a hobby is all the rage these days.  Go to any department store and many supermarkets, and you’ll find whole aisles or half-aisled devoted to scrap-booking.  Hobby stores, likewise, have caught onto the trend and started stocking scrapbooks, dividers, and stickers for making the best memory books. There are even scrap-bookers clubs popping up in cities across North America.

Here’s an idea, though, that maybe you’ve never considered:  As part of your study time, begin developing a study scrapbook.  A study scrapbook is an album that, throughout the period that you’re taking a course, you stock with things that will help you grasp the material better. We’re talking about copies of pages from books, charts, graphs, articles that relate to the material, and more.  Let’s explain what you need in order to create your own study scrapbook, and how to best use it to improve your performance in your course or courses.

We start, of course, with the basic materials.  You’ll need a scrapbook–which resembles a photo album, and as we said, is available at almost any good department store.  The thickness and number of pages will depend on a couple of factors.  First, are you a college student, with several courses–or do you just have one class that you’re taking?  The fewer classes you have, the smaller you’ll need.  If you have several courses, you’ll need either a pretty thick album or one smaller one for each course.  Also important will be how much information is covered during the course.  Again, the more that you cover, the more space you’ll need.

You also need some dividers, so you can separate your album into several sections.  There are borders available to put articles and photos on.  This is purely aesthetic, but the better looking the album is, the easier it’ll be to commit things to memory, so it’s good to make it spiffy looking.  For the same reason, feel free to get some decorative stickers and stick-on letters.

Here’s how to use your album now that you have the materials.  Remember that is not to replace your notebook; it complements it.  As you go through your course, there will often be hand-outs that your instructor will give you to help illustrate certain concepts. While you could put this in your notebook, the idea behind a study scrapbook is to emphasize points and help you memorize them through quick visuals.  So visual-oriented handouts should go in the scrapbook.

Sometimes you’ll find articles in magazines or newspapers that help you understand something you’re studying. Let’s say, for instance, that you’re studying the body’s respiratory system.  A NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC article might be the perfect companion piece, and you can stick that in your study scrapbook.  Along with it, write up a description of what the page is about and the principle that you’re studying which this page helps to illustrate.

Tables and charts are perfect candidates for inclusion in the scrapbook. Example:  You’re studying a math course where you have to learn certain formulas.  Something as simple as the multiplication tables or as complex as the Pythagorian Theorem are often illustrated on charts and should be included.

Remember to put a divider in front of every new topic in your scrapbook.  A good reference point would be a new unit, following your most recent test.  So if, after the last test, you’re starting a unit on World War I, you’ll have a World War I divider.  In this particular example, maps of key battles could be included as part of the section.

Most of us are visual learners.  Inclusion of a study scrapbook like this will help you take advantage of visual media to better learn the material in your course.

You’ve probably known people, either in high school or college, who seemed able to pass any class–even make A’s–with little or no study.  It wasn’t necessarily your imagination, either.  It’s a fact that people learn differently, and some people manage to absorb material without “study” in the traditional sense.  That is, they might have other ways of learning the material rather than pulling out their notes and textbook and trying to memorize it.

Why Do Some Students Learn So Quickly?

So what is their secret?  Why do these rare individuals manage to learn with so little effort and time?  Usually, these people share the same rapid-learning strategy.  It just might be that you can master this strategy too.  It’s a method almost the opposite of rote memorization, the method that most other people use for studying.

Rote memorization is based on the idea that looking at material long enough and enough times will finally store the information inside the brain.  The rapid learner’s strategy is different.  He or she stores information by linking together ideas.  They don’t rely on repetition; they rely on connections.  Through these connections is created a web of understanding and knowledge that will succeed, even if they forget one part of it.

Let’s use a simple method for illustration.  If you have a list of 12 items that you need to memorize, you can either go the traditional route of reading and re-reading it until you remember it–or you can try building connections.  Assign each number from 1 to 12 a word that rhymes with it:  “sun” for one, “shoe” for 2, “tree” for three and so on.  Then assign each item that corresponds to that number a picture with the item on it that you just created.  In other words, let’s say that your list is a list of types of extreme weather. If on your list, you have to remember that #2 is a tornado, you’ve already given 2 the rhyming word of “shoe.”  By picturing in your head a tornado of shoes–a spinning vortex of nothing but Nikes and boots–you’ve made your connection. Now immediately, when you go to make your list when you come to “2,” you’ll think “shoe” and see that tornado.  Then you’ll remember r that the answer is “tornado.”  That’s what we mean by making connections–and it can be done instantly instead of spending a half hour remembering your list.

Here are some other tactics you can use for making connections that will help you remember material for your class:

1) Analogy and Metaphor.  Create a different metaphor for each idea.  For instance, functions on a computer can be likened to pencil sharpeners, or calculus methods can be equated with the speedometer or odometer on your car.

2. Visceralization.  The goal with this tactic is to take an abstract concept that you need to learn and urn it into something tangible.  You don’t just imagine a picture, but you integrate sounds, feelings, smells, and textures.  For instance, if you’re trying to master the Pythagorean Theorum (which allows you to figure out the measurements on an triangle that has one right angle), put yourself in a situation where a ladder and a wall form the right triangle.  You would feel the ladder and the wall and see yourself doing the measurements with a tape measure.

3) The Kindergartener Method  This one simply says that you have to explain the difficult concepts in your class to a kindergartener  Practice explaining it.  This process of explanation forces a person to link ideas together until he himself has mastered them.

4) Mind-mapping.  This has become a popular way of retaining information.  Through this method, you start with a main idea and brainstorm the next logical connection. For each of those connections, you brainstorm the next logical connections, and so on.  So imagine this:  What if, instead of having 20 pages of notes, you had a diagram showing how one idea in your chapter is linked to the next and to the next, and so on?

5) Storytelling.  This is a creative way of linking one thing you’re learning with the next In your mind, create a story that involves these elements in their necessary order.  Then practice telling the story.

These linking methods, once you master them, will have you spending less time studying, and more time truly committing the material to your memory.

Sometimes group study can be a productive thing, and sometimes, not so much.  Group study becomes less than productive when your study sessions turn into occasions for friends to get together to have a good time and share gossip.  Often, there’s little actual study that goes on during these sessions. However, that doesn’t have to be the case.  With a little planning and hard work, your study group can really help each other master your course material.  One of the best ways of doing this is through what’s called the Study Guide Exchange.

The Study Guide Exchange means this:  Each of you in your study group (an ideal number is 4 to 6) is responsible for creating a study guide for the class chapter or unit, based on your own notes.  That is, you should put your notes into a logically-flowing order and type it out in such a way that it can teach OTHER people what you’ve studied during the past few weeks.  After each of you has produced your study guide, you then make copies and share these with the other members of the group.  Let’s look in more detail at the steps involved in your Study Guide Exchange.

1) First, be sure that you have what’s necessary to make your study guide. This means your class notes and textbook, computer, and computer paper.

2) Decide which subject you’re creating the guide for. Most likely, this will be the class that your entire group shares.

3) Now study your textbook and lecture notes, highlighting all key points that you think you’ll need to understand for the test.  This is an important step, because each of you might have slightly different views of what is and isn’t important.  That’s what makes this idea so powerful:  You’re pulling in four or five different ideas about what you should learn.

4) Try to keep your study guide to 8 to 10 pages. More than that, when you consider that everyone will be reading three or four or five of these, will be overwhelming.

5) Emphasize important points through the use of bold-faced or different colored fonts.

6) Throughout the guide, after you go over a couple of important points, include questions with blanks after them. Then in the back of the study guide, have an answer page, so that everyone can check their answers.

7) While you’re working on the answer page, double check to be sure that all of your answers can be found by the others without too much of a strain.

8) To distribute these, you can do one of two things: Either print out enough for everyone, or just get everyone’s email address and email it to them.  Make sure that they have the program that they need to open the file (Word format, or .doc,, is a standard that most people should have, but make sure before you email them).  Either way, everyone will wind up printing one copy.

Theoretically, you can all now study each other’s study guides individually, but feel free to get together as a group and quiz each other on them as well.

As mentioned earlier, this idea works better when you don’t have too many people in your study group.  You can imagine how overwhelming it would be if you have 10 friends in the group, all creating their own 10 page study guide.  This would be a 100 page study guide for each unit in your class, and that’s a bit much for any student to digest.  Keep it to a small group, though, and this method will benefit the class grade for anyone who truly studies the guides.

You’ve seen them, you’ve talked to them–but are you one of them? I’m talking about those people at the local coffee shop, who have their laptop computers and perhaps a textbook or two, along with their notebook and pen. I’m talking about the coffee shop studier. This is the person who, rather than going to the library or staying at home or in the dorm, they head to Starbucks or some other coffee shop to fill their brain with the material from their classes.

Studying at coffee houses is all the rage these days. But is it smart?

Let’s look at the main reasons why people take their studies to the coffee house, and then offer our own pros and cons for the practice. If you ask students why they’re studying there at Starbucks, they’ll usually tell you one of the following:

• It’s a quiet, calm environment, similar to what you’d find at a library.But at a library, you’ll sometimes run into friends and spend time visiting with them. That happens less often at a coffee shop.
• For some people, a drink and a snack help them with the study process, and they’re readily available at a coffee shop. Again, this isn’t usually the case at the library (although some libraries are now experimenting with offering beverages).
• Speaking of beverages, studying and caffeine go together like peanut butter and jelly. And you can’t find a better source of caffeine than your local coffee house.
• If you WANT to study with friends, it’s easier to do so at a coffee house than at the library, because there are usually couches for groups, and there’s no librarian “shushing” you when you start talking.
• And finally, more and more coffee houses have outside sitting–perfect for when the weather is nice and you’d prefer to be studying outside.

Some of these reasons are legitimate reasons, others not so much. Here’s our viewpoint of the best reasons you should consider studying at a coffee house, as well as a list of people who should not do so.

1. Most people need a quiet place to study, and so a library or coffee shop either one will work for this purpose.

2. However, libraries usually limit the amount of time you can be on the Internet. Generally, coffee houses do not, so if you need more online time, the coffee shop is the better choice.

3. On the other hand, if you need an all-day study session, the folks at the library are less likely to mind you staying around without paying than the people at Starbucks. So if you can’t afford to keep buying items but need to study all day, a library is a better choice than a coffee shop.

4. Finally, if you need absolute silence, go to the library. If you need more freedom to talk to people, such as your “study buddies,” a coffee house works better.

Here are some tips for getting the most out of your coffee-house study sessions:

• Go at times when it’s not likely to be as busy. It’s no fun getting there at the breakfast or lunch rush only to find that there’s no table available.
• If you’re with a group, head for the couch, if they have one. You can squeeze more of your friends there than at one of those tiny tables. Plus it’s more comfortable for those long study sessions.
• Don’t spend any more time on the Internet than necessary. It’s too easy to be distracted by email, instant messages, and random surfing. First, do as much study without the Internet as possible, saving the online work for last.
• Finally, remember to buy something at least every couple of hours. This way, the staff who work there won’t get irritated that you’re taking up space, and you won’t be made to feel awkward.

Sometimes the busy student finds it hard to find time to study for his classes. Oh, it’s not that you don’t want to study. But between family stuff and extracurricular activities and maybe even a part-time job–how do you find the time? By having a plan, that’s how. Here are some suggestions that will help you to find time :

1. Set your priorities, and put them in writing. If you don’t have a concrete reminder that studying takes precedent over things like going to the mall or the movies, then something will always crowd out study time. You should live your life off a “to do” list, with all of your important week’s tasks listed on it. And studying should always be one of the top items.

2. Delegate some chores to someone else. If you look at your schedule this week and think that there’s no time for studying, because you have laundry to do on Monday, grocery shopping on Tuesday, someone to take to the doctor on Wednesday, and so on, then see if you can find someone else to do one or two of those chores. Pay them if you have to. Remember, your “to do” list is the most important, and studying should be one of the most important items on that list.

3. Study with a classmate. Sometimes when you just have no motivation to study, you’ll find excuses why you can’t. However, when you have someone else who is scheduled to study with you, you’ll suddenly find that you’re able to squeeze studying into your schedule after all.

4. Take your material with you. You’ll be amazed at how many times you can study for a few minutes, if you’ll just look for the opportunity. For instance, riding on the bus, sitting in a waiting room, waiting in the car while someone finishes their shopping, etc.

5. Make an “audio book” of the materials that you’ve been studying. That is, perhaps you can just tape yourself reading the textbook or your class notes. Then, as you’re doing other things, listen to the tape in the background.

6. Pay attention in class! It’s amazing how much of the material for a test that you can grasp if you just pay attention, and take good notes. In some cases, this could literally cut your study time in half.

7. Finally, don’t forget to take time to relax. This is actually important for your school performance. People who constantly work are in danger of burning out. You need some free time to keep your mind refreshed and to ensure that you do your best on your school work.

There’s no way to completely eliminate the need to spend quality time studying. And there’s no denying that how much time you study often reflects in your grade. However, if you follow these suggestions, you can be more efficient with your study time–and hopefully find that you have time for your course work after all!