study skills

For most of the students I meet, the study skills they really need most are literacy and numeracy.

If your reading is slow, inefficient, exhausting, and inaccurate, you are not going to study anything well; and cute little strategies of note-taking on file cards are not going to fill the gaping hole. Instruction in real reading skills, first decoding, then accuracy, and then critical reading, will take more time than the cute tricks but have a good chance of doing some long-term good.

And all of those comments go double and triple for kids who don’t even know what numbers mean and are trying to do algebra by shoving symbols.

And for those who write slowly and painfully, erase for twice the time they write, and then can’t read their own messes anyway.

Somewhere in my college teaching career I picked up a book titlesd “Becoming a master student”. It has a lot of good advice, including a not on improving handwriting. Trouble is that it would take months of determined effort to implement the advice that this book hands out in a couple of pages. Not that the advice is wrong, far from it, but the temptation is to “cover” one topic a day; the kids nod their heads and then wipe the memory banks clean for tomorrow. I’d recommend it as a reference but to be used with thought.

I’m afraid my experiences are similar, except that the students lack both the fundamental literacy and numeracy skills *and* the strategies and tactics and discipline.
The folks at the U. of Kansas have done excellent work with study and learning strategies — I”ve seen gobs and gobs of stuff that purported to teach study skills, but really amounted to busy work to keep the inmates occupied for the resource time.
http://www.ldonline.org/article.php?max=20&id=483&loc=27 has an excerpt from a great book, and at the bottom there’s a list of links. YOu can build a *lot* of lessons from those links. You would be doing these guys a HUGE favor if you honed in on, say, vocabulary and had them doing X amount of work every week learning and using new words (to mastery, not exposure) — there are some great strategies for it on that list of links. (Ideally you could figure out a way to get more accurate reading; if it were me, I’d end up spending too much time trying to figure out how I were going to do it and the results would all be theoretical.)

Depending on your situation, sometimes resource classes can be a real challenge; if the students have had a few years of it being a free period where they could play cards and snack in the back of the room, it’s a rude shock when a teacher expects them to do something academic. However, I had good experiences with the tried & true focusing on the positive — grades reall still do mean somehting to these guys and when work gets good grades, they’ll do it.
I put some ideas for the resource room on my site at http://www.resourceroom.net/older/resourceroomtips.asp —

The U of Kansas programs, Strategies Intervention Model, are very good. I taught the Test-Taking Strategy, PIRATES, every year. I had “study skills” classes every year at 8th grade level. I used part of the time to teach reading skills as others have mentioned. Then I was able to find out about current assignments and we would work on them together. That will be hard will numerous grade levels. Perhaps, you could have a board or poster for each grade level with a list of current assignments and tests upcoming. There is also a series called Skills for School Success, Anita Archer, I think, that has practical skills at many different grade levels. Organization is always so necessary, so students could keep a calendar and keep their notebooks and backpacks organized. Some audio books for current reading assignments would help too.

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You know, the old fashioned study skills really are neat but I do not know if they are taught anymore.
Like, keeping an organised notebook; keeping an area for tests and whatnot, and a seperate area of the same notebook for class notes and all of that jazz. Or organising a math notebook by topic. Index dividers and a good amount of notebook paper and a binder are all you need. I am doing that this semester and it is working really nice for math and spanish. my back hurts a bit because I keep one for one subject and one for the other, but it pays off to have someone teach you to keep things neat. This is a good thing for a youngster to laern if they are taking subjects that are 100% comprehensive. I had to learn this years ago because those old school spiral notebooks were banned.

Outlining History book chapters is something that I thank goodness I learned in my old resource room days. It is a great skill to have and works for science and some courses like art history also.
I think that the youngsters today need to learn the importance of keeping an organised date book and learning to put things in order of importance. A lot of youngsters have a busier life outside of school and need to learn to keep track of their comings and goings.

<<Hi! I teach ex ed students in grades 9 -12 and just found out that I will have a resource period this fall. Although this period can encompass anything from regular study hall time to one-to-one tutoring in a particular subject, I would really like to focus on teaching study skills (to all) for a portion of the class each day. Can anyone recommend some ideas for good study skill instruction at the high school level?
Thanks, and I hope you are having a great summer!!>>

Try Skills for School Success (Curriculum Associates)! I’ve been using it successfully at the middle school level. I used the 5th grade level, but there is a high school level. Find out who your students are first and what reading levels they are on. This should be a guide to where to begin. Many of the same skills are taught in each level. I’ve been extremely happy with it. Skills include study skills, taking notes, using reference materials, etc.

Marilyn

i’m glad to hear that you like those materials, Marilyn. I think Anita Archer is one of the authors, and I have it on my wish list!

Janis

Janis:

<<i’m glad to hear that you like those materials, Marilyn. I think Anita Archer is one of the authors, and I have it on my wish list!>>

Anita Archer is one of the authors. She appears to be a brilliant woman who has authored extremely useful materials. She is also one of the authors in the REWARDS program, which also turned out to be a valuable addition to my curriculum.

I have the 5th and 6th grade Skills for School Success, but would like to purchase the 3rd and 4th grade books as well. I can’t see we followed the program to the letter (we had to accommodate for the fact that they were 7th graders) and keep them interested.

Marilyn

Right now I have all mid elementary kids, so I haven’t needed REWARDS yet. But I would like the 3-5th grade study skills books. I am surprised her Phonics for Reading books haven’t gotten more publicity. They look pretty easy to use, too.

Janis