LINK

Decision

Last week I was responsible for a good amount of vocabulary for my REL 101 class and my EDU 200 class. In my religion class we had just started a new unit on Islam and were presented with a good deal of new material. A large portion of this material was vocab. As for my EDU class we had a midterm on Wednesday. Both my EDU and REL classes have a good amount of vocabulary words, and both of them have vocabulary quizzes. Vocab is something that I usually do well in; however, there are always those four or five words out of the fifty or so for each class that I always have trouble with, usually because they sound similar or mean similar things. To remedy this problem I used the LINK strategy.

Prep and Application

There wasn’t that much prep needed for the link strategy. For my religion class I simply took my notes from that day looked for the words that seemed the most difficult and used the strategy. For example, I took the word Kitab, which means scripture, and saw that kitab sort of sounds like kibab; then I drew a picture of a skewer impaling a bunch of scripture pages.

My EDU class was a different story. Since I had a midterm that I had already been preparing for, I had a stack of flash cards already. After studying profusely from the flash cards, I realized that there were a stack of at least 5 or 6 words that I was not grasping as much as the other ones. For these words I used the link strategy. I drafted new cards for each word, and before writing the definition on the card I created an image for the term. This helped a lot because instead of drawing a blank or getting flustered with words I didn’t know I could simply picture the image I had created and work out the definition from there.

Evaluation

I am a visual learner so images like this help me a lot. It actually helps me learn the material rather than just memorizing a definition. The actions taken to use the LINK strategy are fairly minimal and can fit in any twenty-minute test prep or after class organization. The materials are even more minimal. All I used for this was my class notes and my flash cards. I evaluate this strategy very highly and recommend it for anyone who is a visual learner or has trouble learning key terms.

CHUNK CHUNK CHUNK

Hello fellow scholastic athletes and welcome back to the greatest study strategy there is. This week I will be talking about a strategy that is the most important and useful for me! And this strategy is called CHUNKING THE TASK. It is one of the simplest strategies that I use but I think it is ridiculously effective. All you have to do is break up your assignment, whether it is a reading assignment, studying for a test, or writing a paper, and schedual when you are going to complete each section (CHUNK) that you have created. CHUNKING THE TASK is a strategy that works exceptionally well for me.

This week I used this strategy in my Writing 105 class and in my Anthropology 111 class. I chose to use this strategy in my Writing class because I have my Unit 2 paper due soon and I knew that I didn't want to wait to the last minute and I also wanted to spread out the work so I wouldn't get stressed out. I used this strategy in my Anthropology class because I had some reading assignments to catch up on and breaking up the reading made it so that I would not lose interest. So far I have kept up with my schedule and I think the main reason why is because of my adaptations that I made so that this strategy is more efficient and I will explain them in terms of LAME.

I chose to write my schedule on my computer desktop using the application STICKIES because I knew that that would be a place that I would see it constantly. And because I am a Visual Learner, the bright colors stood out to me and help me to not forget about my daily assignments. I set up my schedule in advance by seeing what topics should divide up or by page number of my essay. My ANT teacher evaluates my knowledge of the readings on the Unit Test and my WRT teacher evaluates my essay by how I follow the essay instructions.

20 Minute Test Prep & Ranking Priorities !!

This week we had a choice of any strategy that we have learned over the course of the semester, so I chose my two favorites, 20 Minute Test Prep & Ranking Priorities ! I use both of these strategies all the time, the 20 minute test prep is essential to do after every single class, it makes studying for exams so much easier. Ranking priorities is also essential for me because I have terrible task management and I adapted it to help me even more which I will further explain.

I use the 20 minute test prep in all of my classes. I make it a priority to complete the 20 minute test prep before I go to sleep the day of my class because sometimes I do not have time to do it immediately after I get out of class. It is essential to do it DAILY. For my documentation I took a picture of my 20 minute test prep after my IST195 class a few days ago. We have an exam in 8 days so this is going to be very helpful very soon. I keep all of my 20 minute test preps in organizer that has sections for each of my classes. I do not know what I would do without this strategy! It helps me be so much more prepared for my exams !

Every weekend I make a ranking priorities paper and place it on my bulletin board above my desk. I adapted this strategy because just having rankings did not help me much, I needed to schedule a set day and time to get each assignment done. I believe that this adaption will help everyone out and make the ranking priorities strategy more likely to be used by other students.

LAME

I have taken different learners type tests and have came up as a kinesthetic and a visual learner, which is why the 20 minute test prep helps me. Because I am actually writing and answering the questions it helps me remember them, my kinesthetic side. There is very minimal action needed for these strategies, you just need to rank your priorities and spend 20 minutes extra per class making and answering questions. The only materials you need for the 20 minute test prep is a paper, pencil, and you notes or text book. For the ranking priorities strategy you only need your planner which should already have your assignments listed in it. My evaluation of these strategies is that they are the best for me, I use them as much as I need and they help me a great deal. I would recommend them to anyone who needs help with time management or preparing for an exam.

Charlie Reade Smart

Decision

Recently in my religion 101 class we moved onto a new unit, Islam. For this unit we were assigned to read the novel Palace Walk by Naguib Mahfouz. It is a 500 page novel taking place in Egpyt during its British occupation; it follows the lives of a typical Egyptian family of the period and the Islamic culture of the time. This was all swell until my TA told me that I would have to read up to page 195 for the next week, so the lecture on readings in CLS could not have come at a better time. I chose to use the Charlie Reade Smart strategy because this type of reading is much more comprehensive, and I felt more comfortable with this big of a reading assignment to split it up into chunks.

Prep and Application

To start off I had to split the readings into sections for myself that worked with my attention span and schedule, but before I could even create my schedule I had to find out what all of my readings for all of my classes were for at least the next week. Once I had taken note of my various readings it was time to create my schedule. I made a list of all the days in the week and split my reading list into chunks for each day. Now when I use my planner I just write ‘do readings’, so I can just look at my schedule and see what I need to do rather than write out each reading individually.

The next part was actually reading. In my religion 101 class we have been discussing Islam, particularly Islam in Egypt, so I decided to create a reading guide to keep track of and help me find examples of the main themes we talk about in class and the themes of the book.

I’m still in the exposition of this book so I still have to learn an excess of characters and key locations. To keep track of the main and minor characters I decided to create a family tree. The Family Tree has all the main characters and their important traits, as well as a few minor characters attached to the side. Since there is so much reading I thought this would help me so I never had to keep looking back to remind myself who a character was and not waste time.

Evaluation

I think that this reading strategy was extremely effective for me. I thought that the organization would be the most helpful part; however, the most effective strategy I used was the graphic organizer since I am a more visual learner. The action it took was very minimum to set up the Charlie Reade Smart strategy for my large reading assignment, maybe twenty minutes at the most. In the end I only used three basic materials: My reading schedule, my reading guide, and my character sheet. My evaluation of this overall is very positive. I think I will continue to use this method, yet I might add jeopardy questions from the lecture to answer while I read. 

TART Reading Strategy !

Hey everyone! I am back for another week and with another amazing strategy to help you out on your readings! Every single week for my IST 195 class we have to read a chapter in Discovering Computers. Our lectures are not based only on the book, nor are our exams, however we have to take an online quiz every single week solely based on the chapter we read for that week. This has been starting to gethard for me as the chapters have gotten more complex, which is why this lesson could not have come at a better time. In the beginning of each chapter there is a glossary of definitions and at the end there is a practice test. These both helped me use these strategies to the best of my ability. The strategy I used for this class was TART. Each letter in TART stands for a different word, Terms Attend Read Test. Before class, I read the key terms for the chapter and made abbreviations for them accordingly. The next day, I attended lecture and listened for the key technical terms. After class, I read the entire chapter to make more sense of it. After I finished reading I created test questions that I thought my professor would use on the test, using my notes and the chapter. Lastly, I answered these questions and now I have them to help me prepare for my exam. I also used this same technique for my WRT105 course and took the same steps. This strategy helped me with both of these classes, I did not need to make any adaptations because TART was perfect for both of these courses.

LAME explanation

I am a visual learner so this strategy helped me a lot. It made me write down the key terms and abbreviate them so they were right there in front of me during the lectures. It also helped me because I always create test questions to study from and doing this helped me read and create test questions at the same time. All I needed for both of these courses was my laptop and the required books. This strategy worked out amazing for me in WRT105 and IST195 and I would recommend it to anyone in either of those classes or any other class that has readings. If you have any questions post a comment! Talk to you all next week!

sweetTART

Whats up readers, I'm back this week with another post about a learning strategy that I tried out this past week. This week was all about reading! And the Strategy that I tried out this week is called TART. TART is a strategy that helps you comprehend the reading and also helps you prepare for the test you may have on the reading. You are probably asking yourself, "what does TART stand for?" Well that is a great Question. TART stands for:

T: TERMS A: ATTEND R: READ T: TEST

For the TERMS section, you go through your reading and you look through your reading and you read the bold terms and their definitions. For the ATTEND section, you go to your class and take notes and listen for those words you read earlier. After that, you READ the chapter for the information that you just covered. And lastly you TEST yourself by creating test questions from the reading.

I used this strategy for my AST 101 class and for my ANT 111 class. I chose this strategy for these classes because the two classes are mostly lecture focused and that is what TART is the most helpful for. You use the lecture as a preview for what you are going to read later and that helps you create better test questions to study from.

LAME
I am a visual learner so this strategy was great for me because it is the most effective for Visual and Kinesthetic learners. The order that this strategy goes in is great for me because I first looked in the textbooks to see the key words that I need to know. Then I went to class and I got to see what topics that are important to the professor. After that you read the chapter and you get all of the information and while you are reading you focus more on the topics that were discuses in class because you know that those are the topics that are most likely going to be the most important on the test. And finally you use all of that information to test yourself. My AST 101 class and my ANT 111 class test me on my knowledge of the text as well as what he goes over in class so this strategy works perfect in these classes.

Documentation:

1 Plus 3 Note Taking Strategy !!!!!

I used this strategy in two of my classes, my two classes that are based on lectures. First, I did it with my SOC 101 class. I took a piece of paper and separated it into two different sections on the top 2/3 of the paper, one to organize my key terms/ideas and the other section was for their definitions/explanation. Next, I made a section at the bottom of each page to make my own questions that I believed the professor will ask, which helps me out on my 20-minute test prep because I use those questions. I did this for a few pages of notes in my SOC class and my IST class because they are both based on lectures. You can see one page of notes for each of these classes below. Doing this strategy kept me more focused during class because it gave me something more to do than sit there and take notesand that is the type of learner I am. You did not need many materials to do this strategy, just the lectures. After using this strategy it proved to be very effective. I would recommend this strategy for anyone who needs help focusing, taking notes, or studying.