Displaying items by tag: braincompatible study strategies

“Fact in My Pocket” is a novel, effective strategy that students can use when they are trying to commit some piece of academic content to memory.  We can recommend this strategy to our students when they are trying to learn such things as math facts, spelling words, vocabulary words, and science terms.

To incorporate this strategy, students will need two index cards or strips of paper, along with two pockets.  Assume, for example, that Jordy needs to learn her multiplication facts.  She begins by identifying the two facts that she finds most difficult.  She then writes the facts on the strips of paper, one fact per strip.  As she heads to school in the morning, she puts one strip in her left pocket and the other in her right.

A Brand New "Learning How to Learn" Strategy:

This week my video series features music, the seventh independent learning strategy I shared during the “Learning How to Learn” Workshop I presented to parents and students last fall. Using music in a variety of ways as a study strategy yields powerful results. Especially helpful is the use of “piggyback songs.” When we take the tune of a familiar song and substitute content-related lyrics for the original lyrics, then we are using a piggyback song. About two-thirds of my students attended the hour-long, after-school workshop, and I followed up with the families of the remaining children at a later time. Though I try to create rich, authentic, contextual learning experiences for my students on a daily basis, there are still times when they need to learn how to study and remember discrete pieces of information independently, especially as they progress through the upper elementary grades and into middle school and high school.