teaching

Study Help

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study tools

Because I always have parents ask me for study suggestions, I am sharing a list of different ideas to help students prep for a test at home. Students who are just beginning to take tests that involve more than memorized facts need a study buddy (that’s you, parent) to monitor and prod. As much as students would like it to be so, staring at a textbook and notes for 45 minutes without actively doing something with the information on the page does not count as studying.

Around 4th grade, tests are more involved; the thinking to complete the test is more involved, so the prep ahead of time has to be more involved. Learning how to study effectively is a skill that has to be supervised and practiced just like learning a new math skill, mastering a new science concept, or grasping themes in literature.

Locate a Good Study Area

  • Quiet places are preferable, but they should be in proximity of an adult, babysitter, or person who can monitor occasionally. If you have been telling your child “to go study” and sending him off to his room for extended periods of time, I guarantee very little is happening. TV, music, and other electronics should definitely be off and out of view.

electricity flashcards

Start with Memorizing Definitions

  • If an upcoming assessment has multiple vocabulary words that are critical to the key concepts on the test, begin by learning the definitions. There is a memorization component here, so make old fashioned flashcards or use online resources like SpellingCity.com or Memrise.com to create word banks to practice definitions. Once students know basic definitions, they can use the words to explain important concepts. A student might learn a variety of words related to electricity before studying how charges, atoms, and circuits work.

T chart

Set Small, Specific Tasks

  • Telling a student to study without a specific task will not produce results. Know what the student needs to study and give a small, doable task with a time limit. For example, if a student has a test over the Mayans and Aztecs, create a T-chart and write the names of the two groups at the top of the paper. Tell the child to make a list of every fact, detail, idea, they can remember about each culture and bring the list to you after 10 minutes.
  • Give the eager scholar a new job to do after each small increment of time. After a T-chart activity like above, have your student spend another 10 minutes grouping the completed chart by common topics (food, shelter, religion, art, etc.). This is also a good time to identify any big concepts that might be obvious based on grouping facts from the list. Spend a final 10-15 minutes comparing the list to any review sheets from the teacher, reading in the textbook, or other resources from school. After 2-3 specific tasks, rest. Plan to spend shorter amounts of time over several days rather than one massive study session the night before a test.

teacher notes

Think Aloud

  • At the dinner table, in the car, while you make dinner, ask the little learner to explain a process s/he needs to know for the assessment. If you are reviewing for a spelling test, for instance, ask students to explain out loud why a word like hop gets two letter Ps when a suffix is added, and the word becomes hopping. This will be a good litmus test to see if they are only memorizing a process, or if they really know how and why letters work the way they do in words.

spelling study help

Think about the Information in More than One Way

  • When my students are getting ready for vocabulary tests, I always suggest that they use the words in a variety of ways. Yes, they should know the definition and be able to use the word in a sentence, but they should also be able to generate synonyms and antonyms. They should think about situations in real life where the word would appear. They need to be able to recognize the word “in context.” The recall will be much greater if students are developing personal links to the information in different forms. Whenever possible, link the new material to something the student already knows.

vocabulary study help

Create Sample Questions

  • Using any notes or review sheets from class, make up sample problems and practice answering the questions. This works really well for math and grammar tests. As the student answers the practice questions, add in the “think aloud” study suggestion.

prefixes and roots flashcards

Protecting My Paperback Books

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classroom library

You would never know it from the state of my dining room table, but I am very particular about my things. In my classroom, I train my students to empty pencil sharpeners certain ways to reduce pencil shaving spills. I expect them to wipe down desks following a specific system, so the name tags remain undisturbed. And, I have very particular requirements when it comes to borrowing books from my classroom library. Truth be told, I would prefer that we just look at the library and not touch anything, but the whole reason I have the library is to share with students.

covering books materialsSince I know many hands will be touching the books and jamming them into lockers and bookbags, I cover every book with clear contact paper to offer a little protection against all of the love the books receive. I have been perfecting my book covering technique for over 15 years. I wrote a POST on my collaborative teacher blog with step by step directions about covering books, and you can CLICK HERE to see my system.

covering books step 7What protective measures do you take to safeguard your prized possessions when little hands are involved?

 

Sort it, Group it, File it

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sorting swim ribbons

Some of the 11-year old girls waiting to start their swim practice sat with another mom and me and helped us file swim meet ribbons. The ribbons are filed by last name into a folder for each swim team family. Filing was going well until we got to the Smiths. There are 3 Smith families on our team. The helpers were momentarily stumped until they realized they needed to refer to the first names (the sub-category) to file correctly.

Ordering information alphabetically requires multiple thinking steps. First, the child must compare a letter to the alphabet as a whole to figure out where its place should be. Typically, a kid will jump to the beginning, middle, or end of the alphabet and then get more specific. That is a great skill because you are generalizing first.

The next step is to determine an exact location. The child recalls the alphabet order and matches letters. If there are multiple choices like the 3 Smith families in our swim box, then the child has to move to a sub-level and process the steps again.

Ordering information is an essential skill for successful students. We need to constantly rate or qualify information and then prioritize to complete tasks. Children begin learning different strategies for grouping information at a young age. In my experience, students who can organize information in a logical order well tend to finish homework and classwork more easily, are less likely to lose or forget information (both hard copy and information stored in their brains), need fewer reminders from parents, and can more easily problem solve.

sorting books

3 Basic Ways to Sort Information

  • ABC Order: Put information in an order that follows a standardized system like alphabetical order (or numerical order). Children will know to look for information at the beginning, middle, or end of a list. When there are a group of items that all start with the same letter, moving to the next letter helps students practice a system of sub-categorizing and learning to organize items as a whole then break the whole into smaller parts.
  • Grouping: Identify similarities and differences among items and sort and separate. This helps focus attention on the key idea and eliminate distractions.
  • Ranking: Qualify information in an order of importance. This allows children to prioritize a list from high (important) to low (least important). Kids will develop the ability to recognize if something is bigger or smaller, slower or faster, weaker or stronger…

Everyday Activities that Involve Sorting

  • On laundry day, have the kids sort the laundry by creating piles of white, light, and dark to help you get the loads into the washer.
  • Organize a bookshelf  by author’s last name, series in numerical order, size of the books, chapter books in one area and picture books in another (and board books in their own area), or paperback versus hardback books.
  • Have kids pick up their toys and store by type. Put all the cars together in a box or basket, all of the Lego people together, all of the Barbie clothes together…
  • Ask your children to put clean laundry away in the drawers. Kids can put all socks together in one part of the drawer, all of the shirts in one area, and all of the pants and shorts together.
  • Organize a collection. Sort and store swim ribbons by color, rocks by size, or stuffed animals by size or “species”.
  • Put groceries away by type. Separate fruits and vegetables and put them in a designated spot. Group chips and/or snacks together in the pantry. Determine non-food items like detergents and put those away in the appropriate area.
  • Group topics and facts when completing homework assignments. This is particularly helpful when completing textbook reading assignments and will double as a good study skill. List similarities for the main ideas in the reading assignments– something like noting all Pilgrim clothing details, all Pilgrim food details, and all Pilgrim shelter details on separate lists.

Children today have information thrown at them at a much higher rate than I did growing up. When a child researches polar bears, chances are they will not look up “polar bear” in a big heavy (paper) Encyclopedia Britannica and locate one page of organized facts. They will Google the animal and get thousands of text and image responses. How does the child choose? Having a variety of systems for sorting information is essential, so kids can eliminate unnecessary data and retain what they really need to succeed. What are other good sorting activities that are already built into your daily life?

sorting toys

Follow the Clues

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mr lemoncellos library cover

A former student recommended I read Escape from Mr. Lemoncello’s Library by Chris Grabenstein because there is a character in the story who has the same last name I do. It took me a few months to get to it, but I finally read it during my spring break.

This book follows a group of characters who are trapped in a library through a scavenger hunt of library knowledge in order to escape. The book becomes a puzzle for the reader too. It taps into your library skills and background knowledge of classic books. The riddles inserted into the story reminded me of a few other books I read and really liked. I had a starter list of this style of books in my Style-Alike book post, but I thought it was time for a dedicated scavenger-hunt-wrapped-in-a-mystery list.

Most titles on the list have the “riddle” element to them, but I also included classic mystery books like Nancy Drew where characters uncover clues to solve the crime without having to decode a puzzle first to reveal the clue.

red blazer girls cover

  • The 7th Level by Jody Feldman
  • Belly Up by Stuart Gibbs
  • Benjamin Pratt & Keepers of the School series by Andrew Clements
  • Chasing Vermeer (and others) by Blue Balliett
  • Conspiracy 365 series by Gabrielle Lord (must be read in order)
  • Floors series by Patrick Carman
  • Gollywhopper Games by Jody Feldman
  • Hardy Boys by Franklin W. Dixon
  • The Maze of Bones by Rick Riordan (and The 39 Clues series)
  • The Mysterious Benedict Society series by Trenton Lee Stewart
  • Nancy Drew by Carolyn Keene
  • Red Blazer Girls series by Michael D. Beil
  • The Secret Series by Pseudonymous Bosch
  • The Sherlock Files series by Tracy Barrett
  • The Sisters Grimm series by Michael Buckley
  • The Teddy Bear Habit by James Lincoln Collier (older publication)
  • Theodore Boone Detective series by John Grisham
  • Three Times Lucky by Sheila Turnage
  • The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin

floors cover

Mysteries are actually a great book style for younger readers (1st through 3rd grade) because students have to maintain plot details from earlier in the book to understand any resolutions that happen later in the book. There are many series for this lower reading level that are popular. Reading multiple books from a series strengthens reading because they typically follow the same plot pattern in each book. This gets repetitive for an adult but actually helps improve reading skills in kids because they can begin to more accurately anticipate what will happen next, which makes the story easier to follow and remember.

  • The Adventures of the Bailey School Kids by Debbie Dadey and Marcia T. Jones
  • A to Z Mysteries by Ron Roy
  • The Boxcar Children by Gertrude Chandler Warner (I like the ones by the original author the best, 1-19)
  • Encyclopedia Brown by Donald J. Sobol
  • Hank the Cowdog by John R. Erickson
  • Jigsaw Jones by James Preller
  • The Magic Treehouse by Mary Pope Osborne

jigsaw jones book cover

 

Have you read any good mysteries lately?

 

Miniature Worlds

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the doll people

Mr. Star Wars’ teacher just finished reading The Doll People as a read aloud to his class. Mr. Star Wars promptly checked out the sequel, The Meanest Doll in the World, and read it in one sitting. It reminded me of other miniature world stories that I loved when I was his age. The Borrowers and The Indian in the Cupboard were my favorites. In these books, there are mini characters living in a regular-sized world. I think the technical name for this genre is “enchanted reality” but I might be making that up. I wanted to create a book list of all of the great miniature world books, but it turns out there really are not that many that I have read– or could find. So, I guess it is fitting that I have a miniature list of books.

indian in the cupboard

  • Awfully Short for the Fourth Grade by Elvira Woodruff
  • The Borrowers (and sequels) by Mary Norton
  • Castle in the Attic (and sequels) by Elizabeth Winthrop
  • The Doll People (and sequels) by Martin and Godwin
  • The Indian in the Cupboard (and sequels) by Lynne Reid Banks
  • Knight’s Castle by Edward Eager
  • The Littles (and sequels) by John Peterson
  • The Minpins by Roald Dahl
  • The Wednesday Witch by Ruth Chew (out of print– locate a used copy through Amazon or search your local library)

I considered adding books like The Mouse and the Motorcycle by Beverly Cleary and The Rescuers by Margery Sharp because they have small animals doing human things in a regular sized world. I feel that a book like that fits into animal fantasy better. What do you think? What great books would you add to the miniature world list?

the mouse and the motorcycle