Learning How to Learn

Learning

How to Learn

at The Camden School for Girls

Study Smarter, Not Harder

How do you study?

Why do you study this way?

Does it work (and how do you know?)

If your study methods feel easy, then they’re not working.

Simply reading notes is not an effective learning method

Neither is highlighting or underlining.

They don’t require much effort.

More effortful strategies, like the ones covered in this

booklet, produce greater long-term learning gains.

Difficulty is

desirable

even if it’s not always

desired

.

Begin by asking yourself…

Then… And finally… Because… For example… and… This is because… Instead…

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Summarising

When asked a question such as ‘what have you done today?’, you’ll likely provide a summary. This involves you selecting, organising and integrating the key moments of your day. Taking a similar approach with your studies can have a very powerful effect on your learning. What is absolutely key is that you use your own words and don’t mindlessly copy your notes or revision guide.

Self-testing

Research has shown that every time you bring a memory to mind, you strengthen it. And the more challenging you make this retrieval, the greater the benefit. Self-testing improves the recall of information, transfer of knowledge and making inferences between information. Equally, there are many indirect effects such as a greater appreciation of what you do and don’t know, which helps you plan your next steps.

Mapping

Mapping is a brilliant way of organising and learning information as I hope is demonstrated on various pages in this booklet. It helps you break down complex information, memorise it, and see the connections between different ideas.

Drawing

This is about turning text into some form of drawing. Doing so involves you selecting, organising and integrating the information that matters, which forces you to think. This

approach can be incorporated into the three strategies above too.

Self-explaining

Continually ask yourself ‘How?’ and ‘Why?’ when studying a topic and then try to provide answers to these questions. Doing so helps you to see connections and differences between ideas. Self-explaining can also involve you saying loud the steps you’re taking when solving a problem. A recent analysis of 64 research studies showed that ‘it is better to ask a student to see if they can explain something to themselves, than for a teacher or book to always explain it to them’.

Teaching

Einstein is supposed to have said ‘if you can’t explain it simply, you don’t know it well enough’. This strategy works best when you know in advance that you will be teaching someone. As with self-explaining, you’re forced to select and organise what’s

important so that your teaching is as clear as possible. Having someone to interact with and ask you questions strengthens your own learning.

Flashcards

Flashcards have the potential to be a very powerful learning aid. However, how successful this is will depend on the thought you put into making them in the first place and then how they’re used. It’s important to remember that they’re for testing not summarising.

Making good flashcards

• One side of the flashcard should be a single question and its answer on the reverse • Select the most important information to go on each flashcard. You could use topic

checklists or bolded terms in your study guide to help you choose. • Break complex concepts down so that they cover multiple cards. • Use drawings to illustrate answers.

Using flashcards

• Say your answer out loud and not just in your head. It’s very important you are fully committed to your answer. Even better would be to write your answer out as this is what you would have to do in an exam.

• Use them both ways – look at the answers and say what the question is.

Pitch, Duration, Attack (Touch), Dynamic Which 4 parameters did

Messiaen control using total serialism in Mode de

valeurs et d'intensités?

Donne 1 statistiques sur les structures familiales en France. Selon l’Insee: • Les familles monoparentales sont passées de 9 à 23% entre 1975 et 2015.

How do antivirals work?

What is laissez-faire capitalism?

By inhibiting RNA replication

An economic system that allows private enterprise and capitalism to operate

with little or no interference from the state.

Flashcards – The Waterfall Method

A da pt ed fr om h ttp s:/ /b lo g.p re ps ch ol ar .c om /fl as hc ar ds Starting stack Know it Struggled

Know it Know it (2) Struggled

Know it Know it (2) Know it (3) Know it (4) Struggled

Know it Know it (2) Know it (3) Working pile

Know it Know it (2) Working pile

Starting stack

Go through the entire stack saying your answer out loud

Repeat the process

Keep repeating until you have 1 to 5 cards in your struggled pile

Combine and work through

Combine and work through

Taking things further: making meaning with flashcards

• Ask yourself questions about individual cards. Once you can remember the information on the back associated with the prompt on the front, raise questions such as, ‘What else is this related to?’, ‘Why is this important?’ and ‘How would I apply this information?’

• Group cards together in themes. Taking this additional step forces you to ask yourself ‘Which cards have something in common with others?’. Also, this serves as a form of chunking, which helps you to remember information together instead of separately. • Create a mind map with the cards. Explain all the connections you see between individual

cards and between groups of cards. A related strategy is to use yarn or string to literally connect cards together.

Brain dumps

This is so simple and so effective. Spend, say, fifteen minutes with a blank piece of paper and write down everything you know about a topic. Once finished, look at your class notes, textbook and/or revision guide and check that what you wrote is correct. Then look at what you forgot and focus on this. Date the sheet and store it away. At a later date, do the exercise again and compare the sheets – hopefully, you remember more the second (third, fourth etc.) time and will be able to see the improvement you've made.

Brain dumps made easier

Brain dumping can be a terrifying exercise. To create a gentler, if less effective, version, compile a list of key words, terms, people, countries etc. connected with a topic and write uninterrupted for fifteen minutes using these as prompts. For example. If your brain dump was on the ‘Waves’ topic in Physics, your prompts could be:

= s/r =!!_µ 2p Amplitude Antinodes Antiphase Elasticity Electromagnetic Elliptical

path Frequency Harmonics Hz In phase Inertia Mechanical Medium Nodes

Periods Phase difference Plane polarised Polarised Polarising filter Principle of

superposition Progressive Radians Radio waves Sea surface Seismic Sound

Stationary Transverse Wavelength Waves on strings

What did John Hampden do in October 1637?

He challenged the legality of Ship Money and refused

to pay the tax.

Challenge yourself: Why is important?

Cornell Note Taking Method

Topic: Sub-topic: Date:

Recall cues

Questions and tasks based on the notes opposite

Notes

Tips

• Bullet points

• Symbols and abbreviations

• Write in your own words (don’t mindlessly copy) • Make sure it makes sense to you

What to write

• Keywords and ideas

• Important dates / people / places • Diagrams / charts

• Formulas

• Examples / case studies

• Critical analysis e.g. strengths / weaknesses

Summary

Summarise the main points in the notes above. Think about: • Why is this info important?

• What conclusions can I draw?

Ad ap te d fr om ht tp s: //c hl oe b ur roug hs .c om /c hoos e-be st -not e-ta ki ng -me th od /

Topic: Recall cues Notes Summary

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Topic: Recall cues Notes Summary

Carbocation

(

Alkenes

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What is a carbocation? Carbocation are molecules that carry a positive charge on a

carbon atom.

Draw _{three examples} E._g.

of a: 943

H- Ct

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secondary

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°3° carbocation and tertiary (30).

.

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group.

significance

of t whethera CHS- C-H carbocation is l H 10,20 or 30 ?

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alkyl _groups. t (_Hz

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tertiary

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+

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different

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+ t t CHS- C-H = CHS

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least stable _{Most stable}

Carbo cations are molecules with a tire _{charge on} a carbon atom. They can

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have _{different stabilizes}

+ t t

P _R-f-M = 20 R-C- R = 30 R-C-R

l l

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Thinking and Linking Grids

These force you to think deeply about an area of a subject you’ve studied. Below is an example grid for Macbeth along with the instructions. It’s possible for you and your friends to make grids of your own. Create a 6 x 6 grid and look through your class notes and study guides to identify key people, ideas, themes, countries etc. to populate the grid with. Ask your teacher to double-check them and share with your classmates.

A Streetcar Named Desire Thinking and Linking Grid

1 2 3 4 5 6

1 Cruelty Progress Loneliness Sin Madness Belle Reve

2 Sexuality Kindness Steve Appearances Fate Stanley

3 Mitch Marriage Elysian _Fields Sexual desire Eunice Flowers

4 Mutability Stella City Beauty Light Illusion

5 Cruelty Death Opposites Blanche Truth Gender

6 Decadence Bathing Old South Guilt Drunkenness Social class

Instructions

You need a pair of dice.

1. Roll your dice to get the co-ordinates of your first box and find the word/phrase in it. Start with the numbers along the side first. For example:

would equal ‘Sexual desire’.

2. Write how your word/phrase links to the play. 3. Roll the dice again to find a new word. For example:

4. Write both words in a blank table like the one below. Think about how the two words/phrases link together before writing your answer in the table.

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Final learning tips

Space out your learning on a subject

Spacing out your learning over time is far more effective than last minute cramming. This is based on research into how we forget and how we remember. The speed at which we forget something will depend on many factors such as the difficulty of the material, how meaningful it was to us, how we learned it and how frequently we relearn or remember it. What the last factor tells us is that when we learn something for the first time, we need to review it quickly afterwards. The more times we force ourselves to remember something, the longer the gap can be between reviews, which the diagram below illustrates nicely.

Don’t study one topic at a time – mix it up!

It’s better to jumble up your learning within a subject instead of focussing solely on one topic at a time and block studying that. So, rather than studying AAA BBB CCC (each letter represents a topic within a subject), there is a significant benefit in approaching it as, say, ABC BCA CAB because you’re more likely to see connections between topics, which will result in a better grade.

A final self-testing and self-explaining tip – ‘Just a Minute’

Based on the Radio 4 show, you must talk for a minute on the given concept or topic without pause, hesitation or repetition. You’ll discover very quickly how well you know the topic while also consolidating the knowledge and understanding you retrieve from your memory.