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Top Ten School Study Strategies

What Will Help Me Succeed in School?
Learning is a skill, and like all skills, it can be improved. You can use skills as well to do well at school.
What are your strengths? What are your weaknesses? Circle each item that could help you.

1. Learn how you learn. Do you learn best by watching? Listening? Doing? Reading? Do what works best for you. Someone who learns by seeing needs to take good notes to study from later.
2. Learn about your teachers. What is their style? What do they expect? Will they test more on the lecture or the reading? Find someone who has already taken a class and ask what it was like.
3. Learn how to take notes and how to take tests. On multiple choice tests, the way a question is worded can give clues about the answer.
4. Make up your own tests. What has the teacher focused on? What parts are most confusing? Try to out-guess your teacher. Get other students to make their own tests, and then quiz each other.
5. Learn as you go. It’s better than cramming for tests, especially with material you’ll need later on.
6. Find a good study place away from noise and distractions, like study halls or libraries.
7. Make a study schedule. Then stick to it.
8. Pace yourself. Give your mind a break. Switch which classes you study for. Get exercise.
9. Study before bed and get enough sleep. Sleeping after studying can help you remember better.
10. Memorize in small pieces. Memorize new material quickly and in small chunks. Find ways to remember, like making an outline, finding associations, using patterns, or turning facts into a story.