Study Skills: Five Tips to Organize Notes and Materials for More Efficient Study Time `

Studying is a huge skill necessary to learn, especially as students enter middle and high school. Often times, students think the act of “studying” is one that should occur a night or two before the big test. They spend hours re-reading all of their notes and materials, only to feel stressed and under-prepared (and tired from staying up late) on the day of the test. Studying is actually a process that should be taking place throughout the entire semester. Understanding some key study skills can greatly improve the process of studying and cut out those dreaded late night cram sessions. Below are five tips to organize materials and notes for a more efficient and effective study time. 

1. Take Active Notes in Class: One of the best ways to cut down on study time right before a test is to actively take notes in class in an organized manner. The Cornell Method of note-taking is a great option to help with organized note-taking. There are printable templates for the Cornell Note Taking method on Etsy, or you can make it yourself. Split the page into three sections: one for notes from class, one for the main idea and a small section at the bottom for summarizing. Taking the extra time to make organized notes in class will significantly reduce the amount of time needed to actively study closer to the test.

2. Create Study Materials: After each unit in class, take some time to create study materials from the organized notes you have been taking. This might look like a new set of flashcards, or a simple study guide pertaining to each unit of information. Having these materials already made by the time the test comes up will be key in cutting down on study time, and will provide active review in the process. 

3. Create a study schedule: Pulling an all-nighter the evening before a big test is certainly not the most effective way to study. Our brains retain information better when we take it in in shorter chunks over longer periods of time. Once your child has an organized note-taking system, they can then create a study schedule where they set aside 20-30 minutes 2-3 times a week for each class to actively review notes. This happens every single week, not just before the big test, so that by the time the test comes up they will have a deeper understanding of the knowledge required of them for the test. 

4. Organize Materials by Topic: If you have been given a study guide, this is a wonderful opportunity to organize your notes and materials by topics and sub-topics provided on the study guide. Take a look through the study guide and write down a list of all the main topics that will be required to know on the test. Then go through all of your notes and materials from class and organize them by topics covered on the study guide.

5. Participate in active studying techniques: Re-reading notes can be helpful throughout the semester, however more active study techniques need to be utilized to study effectively and efficiently. Quizlet is an online platform that allows you to create quizzes or flashcards for your classes. By formulating questions yourself, and then answering them you are much more actively participating in the study process and will better learn the information. Alternately, have a friend or family quiz you over the required material. 

Written by: Laine J.

Tips and Tricks To Help With Task Initiation

Imagine this: a high school student has an essay due in one month. They know they have the whole month to finish it so they focus on other assignments that are due sooner. One week from the due date, the teacher reminds the class about the essay due at the end of the month, yet now that student also has two tests, two quizzes, a busy extra-curricular schedule and one more project all due at the same time. Suddenly, the once small task that they had plenty of time for, they now have zero time for. This is an example of where task initiation skills would have come in handy. Task initiation, the opposite of procrastination, can be one of the hardest executive functioning skills to improve. Let’s dive into some strategies and tips to help strengthen this vital skill that is needed not only during school years, but into adulthood as well. 

Have a discussion with your child about obstacles that they feel inhibit them from starting their work. Make a list of these obstacles on one side of a paper, and then work together to come up with specific strategies on the other side of the paper of how to perhaps overcome these obstacles. For example, a common obstacle for starting a task might be “This assignment is going to take way too long, and I don’t have time to start on it tonight.” A solution may be to break down the assignment into smaller pieces, i.e. picking two of the fifteen total math problems, or writing just the introduction paragraph of the essay. Have this chart of obstacles and solutions easily accessible so your student can pull it out whenever needed. 

For particularly hard-to-start tasks, consider rewards. For example, if there is an assignment that your child has been avoiding all week long, perhaps they can earn a small reward (like their favorite smoothie or a special dessert) if they get started and make significant progress on that work. It will be helpful to specify exactly how much of the assignment they need to complete to earn the reward. 

Try using a timer to help with short bursts of work. Set a timer for twenty minutes and tell your child they are going to work on this assignment for twenty minutes only today and then take a break and move onto something else. Sometimes, having a set time to work on it can make the task seem less overwhelming. 

Set up a prepared environment for homework time. Make sure that your child has a clutter and distraction free place to get their homework done each day. Consider if they may need reduced access to their phone or the internet during their set homework time. Having a calm and organized environment with minimal distractions can help with task initiation. 

Provide extra support at the beginning of hard tasks. It can be helpful to sit with your child as they begin a task or assignment that they have been putting off. Tell them that you are going to get some of your work done while they start to get their work done. This may be enough to give them the structured push they need to get going on their work. 

Written by: Laine J

Five Strategies to Help Boost Reading Comprehension

One of the most fundamental academic skills all children must learn is that of reading comprehension. In its most basic sense, reading comprehension involves understanding and interpreting what is read. Reading comprehension is a vital skill which can be used across all subjects, not just language arts. Improving reading comprehension unlocks a better understanding of word problems, research and non-fiction texts. So, let’s dive into five strategies to help boost a student’s reading comprehension that can be implemented every day! 

1. Preview the text: Often, young readers will dive into a text without thinking much about what they are about to read. It can be extremely beneficial to preview a text before reading it and answer a few key questions. Firstly, identify what type of text is about to be read. Is it fiction or non-fiction? Was it written to teach us about something or to be entertaining? Knowing the category a certain text falls into can be helpful to understand before reading the text and lead to better comprehension of the passage. Secondly, identify any unknown words or text features and discuss them prior to reading the passage.

2. Gain New Vocabulary: One thing that holds many young readers back from fully understanding and being able to interpret a passage is their lack of knowledge about new vocabulary. Even if a child can literally read each word, if they cannot understand key vocabulary they will also struggle to understand the passage. A helpful strategy to help with vocabulary would be to go through the entire passage and ask your child to tell you each word that they don’t already know the meaning of. They can make a list of these new words and then you can work together to find definitions. You could then make flashcards or a matching game with the vocabulary words to help your child learn them.

3. Generate Questions: If you are reading aloud with your child, which is highly recommended for all new readers especially, be sure to stop every few minutes and ask questions directly related to what you just read. Some examples might be, “what do you think is going to happen next,” or “wait, on the last page where did Jimmy go again?”. Often times, young readers will be so focused on just reading the words correctly and with fluency that they don’t slow down to internalize what just happened in the story. Stopping every once and awhile and briefly discussing key characters and events will help consolidate the information being read.

4. Summarize: After each chapter or section of a text, practice summarizing. This could be done aloud or written down. What were the most important things that happened in this passage? Who were the key characters? Work on helping your child to summarize only the most important events and to do so in the sequence in which they occurred in the story.

5. Find Evidence: Students need to not only be able to answer more simple questions regarding a text (i.e. setting, characters, sequence of events), but they also need to be able to answer more higher level questions and use evidence directly from the text to back up their answers. Some questions you might be able to ask would be “In the last chapter, Jimmy was feeling nervous. Find me a sentence that shows that Jimmy was feeling nervous.” Underlining, highlighting or pointing out the specific sentence that shows the answer from the text is another key skill to improve upon reading comprehension especially in the context of test taking skills.

Written by: Laine J.

Metacognition: Reflecting Upon First Semester and Setting Goals and Rewards for the Second

The start of a new year is an excellent time to both do some self-reflection on the past semester and look ahead at the upcoming semester. One of the key executive functioning skills, metacognition, is essential in doing both of those things. Metacognition, in its most basic definition, is the act of thinking about thinking. Sounds simple, but in reality it is one of the hardest skills to strengthen because we often just don’t take the time to sit down and think about what went wrong and what went right and why. However, if we can improve this self-regulatory process we can begin to strengthen all of our other executive skills because they all work interdependently. So, let’s take a look at what it means to reflect on the past semester and set goals and rewards for the second semester!

Helpful strategies when reflecting on the previous semester: 

• Be Specific: When we begin to “reflect” on the past semester, it is important to be as specific as possible. Hopefully, you had some goals previously set that were measurable. For example, your child’s goal might have been “turning in all homework assignments on time with no more than one missed assignment per week.” Now is the time to go in and see if this goal was met and how often it was met. If possible, giving a percentage here is helpful (i.e. this goal was met 80 percent of the time).

• Open Discussion: After looking as specifically as possible at previous goals or grades from the last semester, spend some time discussing what went wrong and what went right. It can be helpful to do this for each class individually, especially if there are one or two classes that goals were or were not met in. For a class where goals were met, ask questions like, “What were some things you felt helped you the most to stay on track in this class,” or “What do you feel you did really well in this class?” For classes where goals were not met, it may be helpful to ask questions like, “Can you tell me what the hardest aspects of this class are,” or “What are some things that you felt you struggled with in this class?” Jot these things down and spend some time discussing strategies to adjust or improve in each area!

• Future Planning: Once we have identified the successes and areas for improvement from the past semester, we can better plan realistic goals and rewards for the semester ahead.

Setting New Goals and Rewards

• Setting New Goals: January is naturally a great time to look ahead at the remainder of this school year and either make new goals or adjust previously set ones. Let’s say in the previous semester your child had a goal of turning in all homework assignments on time with no more than 2 missed assignments per month and they did this 90 plus percent of the time. Now may be a good time to adjust this goal to “completing all homework assignments on time with only 1 or no missed assignments per month”. If a goal is consistently being met (85 percent or more of the time) it would be good to either adjust it to strengthen it more, or possibly look to see if there’s another area that could be worked on instead.

• Defining Rewards: Rewards can be extremely beneficial in all scenarios but especially if many of the goals from the previous semester haven’t been met. Let’s go back to the goal of completing all homework assignments per month with two or fewer missed. If this goal was only being met 50 percent of the time, now may be a good time to add a reward in for reaching this goal. It is good to offer a mix of smaller attainable rewards and then possibly a larger reward. In the scenario of turning all homework assignments in on time, there could be a weekly, or even daily, small reward for turning work in and a larger reward to look forward to if the month-long goal is met. It’s great to discuss with your child what rewards are most interesting or exciting to them and work together to come up with an incentive plan as the new semester begins!

Written by: Laine J.

Self Regulation and Emotional Control: 5 Tips and Tools to Use at Any Age when Stress Gets High

We’ve all been there… the work has piled up, there isn’t enough time to complete everything and anything that can go wrong does. Yes, life can be full of stressful situations no matter who you are or what age! A key life skill is our ability to handle our emotions and self-regulate even at times where it may seem impossible. Self- regulation and emotional control are skills that most of us are, in fact, still developing each and every day. Similarly to how we strengthen our bodies at the gym, we must also practice our tools to de-stress and self-regulate on a regular basis. Below are five tools and tips to help improve these vital executive functioning skills at any age. 

1. Mindfulness and Breathing Exercises: Mindfulness and breathing exercises can be some of the most beneficial tools to work on our emotional control and handle all that life throws at us. The key is to practice them on a daily basis, not just when things get hard. Think of it this way, a professional athlete spends an enormous amount of time training for the big day, they don’t just show up at the game and expect to be good. Our minds work the same way. For younger children, the ‘take five’ breathing exercise is a great strategy for calming down. Have your child hold up their hand and trace each finger breathing in as they go up the finger and out as they go down. For older kids and adults, the 4-7-8 is an excellent breathing exercise to use daily. Breathe in through your nose for a count of four, hold at the top for 7 seconds and breathe out for a count of 8. Repeat this four times. By making these exercises a part of your daily routine now, you can have them in your toolkit when stress gets high.

2. Movement: The benefits of regular physical activity cannot be stressed enough. When we exercise our body gets endorphins, and as Elle Woods says it, endorphins make us happy. It is great to try to incorporate movement a little each day, but especially when life gets chaotic it is more beneficial than ever to stop, take a break and get some physical activity. Going for a walk or bike ride, doing twenty minutes of yoga, or having a ten-minute dance party break for the little ones (and little ones at heart) can all be excellent brain breaks and give us what we need when we are having trouble regulating our emotions.

3. Create a Calm Down Kit: When we feel stressed, we often want to be comforted. A great idea to help with this is to create a basket or kit that can help us calm down and feel at peace during these times. For little ones, the basket might include a stuffed animal, a fidget toy or small puzzle, a book of yoga cards, a sensory jar or play dough. For older kids, a calm down kit might include headphones for listening to your favorite music, a comforting snack, a mindful coloring book, a warm blanket or pillow, a candle or anything else that brings us the feeling of peace that we crave during times of stress.

4. Change up the Routine: If your child all of the sudden has a bunch of projects, multiple homework assignments and a test due in two days, cue the stress and emotional overload. A simple tool that can help is to change up your routine. This might mean working in a new environment like outside or at a coffee shop. Another option is to alternate the harder tasks with something different and fun— perhaps an activity in your calm down basket or a quick trip to get some ice cream!

5. Nourish Your Body: When we get stressed, we tend to forget about self-care and that impacts our ability to self-regulate and control our emotions. Make sure to drink extra water, eat whole foods, get plenty of sleep and exercise. We can also nourish our minds by doing something creative like a craft, spending time with family and friends, or watching a funny show or movie to give a good old dose of laughter.

Written by: Laine J.