My top 5 simple study tips

Getting better grades should not be a complicated process. Some of the best study techniques are really simple.

Hi there,

Today is all about simplicity. Some of my favourite study techniques are really simple. Let’s keep it simple and crack straight into it. Here are my top 5 simple study tips.

1. When you sit down to study you need a plan.

Whether it's sitting down to do homework, some general study, or more serious exam study, I can't exaggerate the benefits of your teen having a study plan.

Having a plan means their study has purpose, and having purpose will help your teen with:

• FOCUS: Having purpose means you're not dithering without direction.

• MOTIVATION: Having a purpose or goal provides you with an end point to work towards.

• EFFICIENCY: When you've got a purpose this helps to minimise distractions.

  (All three of these points positively feed back on one another too)

Simple plans are all your teen needs when they sit down to study — just knowing what they want to achieve during that study session can help immensely. Plans like:

• 20 math practice questions answered

• making an Essay Plan

• writing two paragraphs of an essay

• planning out an assignment

• making my Exam Study Timetable

• writing out notes from class today

Simple plans like these can be the difference between your teen staring blankly at their desk and a productive study session.

2. Never write an essay without an Essay Plan

An Essay Plan is an essential pre-step to writing a high school essay, whether it’s for an assignment or in an exam. I talk about them a lot — here, here and here.

Essay Plans:

• Give essays structure (which will help make your teen’s essays much more enjoyable to read = happy examiner = better grade)

• Make sure you cover all points and don't leave anything out

• Take the stress (largely) out of the writing process, because you already know what you're going to say

• Help manage time in exams because you write the essay based on the plan

Essay Plans don't need to be works of art. I know what the time pressure during study and exams is like. A scribble setting out what each paragraph is going to be about is all that’s possible sometimes.

3. Do NOT study everything

If you want to study inefficiently and stress yourself out to the max to the detriment of your grades, then trying to study everything in your school curriculum is a great idea.

BUT — if your teen would like to engage in targeted, efficient and effective study that lets them do well in exams without going insane, then I highly recommend NOT studying everything there possibly is to study.

The majority of their exam study should be focused on the KEY TOPICS. The big ticket items. The topics your teen’s teacher talked about for most of the year. The headlines. Not the random tangential fact the teacher mentioned once for two minutes five months ago.

I credit my exam success to being cunning about what to study — not studying every possible topic, but thinking about what topics were most likely to come up in exams and making sure I understood THOSE topics really well.

Targeted study is key. I recommend your teen spends most of their exam study time making sure they understand the key topics really well, and then flesh out their study with extra information that will make the examiner go WOW! This kid really knows their stuff!

4. Use past / practice exams

Wouldn't it be great if you could get hold of your older sibling's / friend's exam papers from previous years and use those to study since they will be full of questions and be in a format EXTREMELY SIMILAR to what your exams will be? WELL — YOU CAN!!!

This is the beauty of past / practice exam papers. Short of being psychic, they are the best thing your teen can use to simulate what an exam will be like.

I would always try to complete at least 2 past exams before each exam, and under exam conditions (ie in the time we would have in the real exam), usually in the final days leading up to an exam. This would show me how well prepared I was — where the gaps in my knowledge were — whether I needed to speed up — what I needed to work on.

Ideally, your teen won't just look at past exams at the end of their exam study — I suggest taking a look at one BEFORE they even start. Past exams tell you what you're getting yourself into — what lies ahead — what topics the exam is likely to focus on — what kind of questions you need to prepare for.

5. Use your study notes to get exam-answer-ready

As I’ve said before study notes are basically a must-do for effective exam study. But to get even more out of their study notes I suggest your teen tries the following.

Rather than just transferring information from their books to their notes, your teen will find they are much better prepared for exams if they dedicate at least part of their time to writing study notes in a way that prepares them for answering the types of exam questions likely to come up in the exam.

For instance — if your teen was studying chemical bonds for Chemistry (eg covalent vs ionic vs metallic), it would be fine if they started off by simply writing out a few sentences that explained each type of bond.

But the exam isn't going to ask them to just explain what the different types of bonds are. It’s going to be craftier than that, because the exam is designed to test you and see if you really understand your stuff. The exam is more likely to ask something like, describe three types of chemical bonds and discuss the differences between them.

Knowing that this is the type of question my Chemistry exam was going to throw at me, as part of my study notes I would do things like make a table that emphasised the key features of each bond type and the differences between them, and draw diagrams that showed how the bonds are different.

Study notes that include techniques like this are going to prepare your teen for exam questions a lot more than just going through the motions of writing out notes. It's a big trap most students fall into — studying a lot of content but not APPLYING it to exam questions.

That's why it's really important to practice applying knowledge during exam study, and study notes are a great place to practice.

Simple study is best

That's the takeaway message today. Effective study is simple and practical. It doesn’t need to be a complex process that only straight A students can get through.

These study tips paid off big time for me and I hope they’ll do the same for your teen.

Thanks so much for reading.

Clare