How to Incorporate Study Skills into the everyday classroom!

By Tarryn Audas Secondary English, Health and Physical Education Kununurra District High School

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5 Steps to Incorporating Study Skills

1.Setting Classroom Priorities 2.Setting Achievable Goals3.Establishing what obstacles in concentration

can occur4.Creating a Positive Study Environment5.Creating a Study Plan– time management

strategies

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Setting Priorities Plan:

• Class discussion with students about their extra-curricular activities and commitments – what do they do after school.

• Get students to write down their out of school commitments in their subject book.

• Students then write down what is expected of them at school in the subject area. (English)

• Then students rank what they have written down in order of importance to them.

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Setting Priorities Continued How to set priorities?

• Discuss what priorities are? Why it is important to have the right set of priorities. Definition: Precedence, especially established by order of importance or urgency.

• Ask students to think about their ordering of priorities and see if they would change anything. Discuss Changes.

Discuss with students the consequences of having the wrong priorities, particularly related to achievement at school particularly in that subject area.

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Priorities In My Classroom (English)

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Setting Achievable Goals What is Goal Setting? Goal setting involves establishing specific, measurable,

achievable, realistic and time-targeted (SMART) goals. Establish with class the “Daily Priorities” of the classroom or subject area. What

are the “must dos” and “plan to dos?” List the classroom priorities, have them displayed so students can refer back.

(These can be the school’s behaviour expectations) Each student is to write 5 short-term goals that correspond with each priority. For example – KDHS

I AM RESPECTFUL – short term goals: I will use polite and encouraging words, I will listen to others etc.

I AM RESPONSIBLE I AM PREPARED I AM SAFE

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Obstacles in concentration – Creating a Positive Learning Environment

Create a mind map on what is a positive learning environment with students.

After the mind map activity ask students to journal write for 5 minutes about where and how they study?

Whilst they are writing, teacher is to cause distractions, talk loudly, whistle, hum, sing, open and shut doors and windows etc.

After students have finished journal writing, in pairs they will need to actively brainstorm external and internal obstacles to studying and create smart solutions.

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Creating a Study EnvironmentWhat works well for one student in one family environment may not work for another.

Creating an individual study plan.

Ask students to visualise themselves studying effectively. What do they picture? What are some good places to study and best times to study?

Students to write a journal entry with pictures describing their ideal studying environment.

Class discussion about how they can create this environment at home.

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Creating a Study Plan – Time Management Get students to come up with some estimations around how

much time they sleep, eat, watch TV, play sport etc.

Students are to then conduct research on how they spend their time over a three day period. (see attached hand out)

Follow up activity – students reflect on their time sheets and come up with three ways they can better use their time.

Lastly incorporate a individual study plan – ask students to block out all extra curricular activities first and then ask them to fill in study periods 4 times a week for your subject area. (Minimum ½ hour per session).

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Please see me after presentations if you have any questions?

After these 5 techniques have been incorporated into your class, you can teach other specific study skills like note taking, creating efficient study notes, summarising, paraphrasing, quoting etc.

Sample high school and primary school hand outs if you are interested.

Any Questions?

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