Three fundamental rules for effective high school study
For students who don't know where to start, these fundamentals are a must.
Hi there,
If your teen is really lost when it comes to studying it can be really difficult to know where to start. How do you help them get their study on track?
Today I want to look at three fundamentals of effective studying. If any one of them is missing then your teen will likely face an uphill battle to get the grades they are capable of.
Understanding these fundamentals as a base for their study will allow your teen to build on these principles and develop their own Study System.
Let’s dive right in.
Rule #1: Identify what you need to know
A trap that a lot of students fall into is believing that they need to study everything under the sun to get good grades.
An efficient studier knows that they need to identify what topics are central to the subject and make sure they understand those really well.
If they often finds themselves thinking when they sit down to study, “I don’t know what to do”, what they need to ask themselves is, “what are the key topics of my subjects”.
Examiners are looking for understanding, not waffle, so it’s far better that your teen uses their precious time to understand the core topics of their subjects, rather than spend valuable time and energy studying everything not very well.
(Top tip: My favourite tool for sorting out what I needed to know, particularly before starting exam study, was to make Subject Maps.)
Rule #2: Practice and repeat
Your teen will not be able to learn the huge amount of information that their high school curriculum demands if they don’t develop and practice throughout the year.
Any musician or athlete knows you can’t expect to perform well on finals day if you haven’t done the leg work leading up to it, and studying is no different.
Practice and repetition are key to being able to retain a large amount of information.
This requires doing homework, completing practice questions until they become easy, studying for practice exams even though they ‘don’t count’, and attempting past exam questions, especially during exam study.
It doesn’t matter whether a subject is essay- or number-orientated, practice and repetition are a must.
Rule #3: Study to understand
Every time your teen sits down to study they should be aiming to understand what they’re studying, not trying to rote learn it.
I can’t remember where I heard this quote, but it’s a good mantra for studying:
If you study to remember you’ll forget, but if you study to understand you’ll remember.
This rule ties in with Rule #1; your teen needs to be consciously studying for the topics that they need to know, and be taking stock when they study that they are actually taking the information in, not merely glazing over the surface and going through the motions but not retaining any of it.
These three rules or principles of effective study really are crucial to getting through the high school year and approaching studying in a productive, effective way.
Would love to hear how your teen is going in the comments. We can all help and learn from each other.
Thanks so much for reading.
Clare