Learning How to Study

Students are often asked to remember content-area material that they’ve read for a discussion, to take a test, or for an oral or written project. The traditional way to study is to memorize a list of facts, but it’s more effective to use strategies that require students to think critically and to elaborate ideas. As they study, students need to do the following:

• Restate the big ideas in their own words
• Make connections among the big ideas
• Add details to each of the big ideas
• Ask questions about the importance of the ideas
• Monitor whether they understand the ideas

Students use these five strategies as they study class notes, complete graphic organizers to highlight the big ideas, and orally rehearse by explaining the big ideas to themselves.

Taking Notes

When students take notes, they identify what is most important and then restate it in their own words. They select and organize the big ideas, identify organizational patterns, paraphrase and summarize information, and use abbreviations and symbols to take notes more quickly. Copying information verbatim is less effective than restating information because students are less actively involved in understanding what they’re reading.

Students take notes in different ways: They can make outlines or bulleted lists; draw flow charts, webs, and other graphic organizers; or make double-entry journals with notes in one column and interpretations in the other column. Or, if students can mark on the text they’re reading, they underline or highlight the big ideas and write notes in the margin.

Too often, teachers encourage students to take notes without teaching them how to do it. It’s important that teachers share copies of notes they’ve taken so students see different styles of note taking, and that they demonstrate note taking—identifying the big ideas, organizing them, and restating information in their own words—as students read an article or an excerpt from a content-area textbook. Once students understand how to identify the big ideas and to state them in their own words, they need opportunities to practice note taking. First, they work in small groups to take notes collaboratively, and then they work with a partner.

Teachers often use study guides to direct students toward the big ideas when they read content-area textbooks. Teachers create the study guides using diagrams, charts, lists, and sentences, and students complete them as they read using information and vocabulary from the chapter. Afterward, they review their completed study guides with partners, small groups, or the whole class and check that their work is correct.

It’s also important that teachers teach students how to review notes to study for quizzes and tests. Too often, students think they’re done with notes once they’ve written them because they don’t understand that the notes are a study tool.