How to Study: Resources that work in every class
Start Here: Habits That Work in Every Class
How Students Can Use Spacing and Retrieval Practice (The Learning Scientists)
If you read only one link this month, read this one. Two cognitive scientists explain why short study sessions spread over time beat one long cram session, and why quizzing yourself works better than rereading. Rereading feels productive because the material starts to look familiar. The struggle of pulling an answer from memory is what makes it stick.
The Feynman Technique (University of York)
This is teaching it back, explained. Choose a topic and explain it in simple words, as if you were talking to a child or someone who knows nothing about it. You can write it down, say it out loud, or explain it to a friend or family member. Wherever you get stuck is exactly what you need to study again. Try it with a chapter summary, a theme from the novel you’re reading, or a comma rule.
Cognitive Costs of the Mere Presence of Smartphones (Adrian Ward, University of Texas)
This is the study that should change where your phone sits while you do homework. Students did worst on thinking tasks when their phones were on the desk in front of them and best when the phones were in another room. The effect held even when the phones were completely turned off. Silent mode isn’t enough. Put the phone in another room for the length of your study session.
In the Classroom
Vocabulary
Flashcards 101 (Toronto Metropolitan University)
This is a one-page guide to making flashcards that work. Put one idea on each card, write the answer in your own words, shuffle often, and say the answer out loud before you flip. It takes two minutes to read and can change how you study vocab for the rest of the year.
Flashcard Resources (University of Michigan)
Already using Quizlet? This page shows you its “Long Term Learning” mode, which brings words back right before you’re likely to forget them. It also compares Quizlet with Anki and other free tools.
Bridge tip: Make Quizlet work for the SAT, too. On the back of every vocab card, add a sentence you wrote yourself, not just the definition. The Digital SAT doesn’t ask whether you’ve memorized a word. It asks whether you can figure out what the word means in context. Your own sentence trains exactly that.
Root Words, Roots and Affixes (Reading Rockets)
One root unlocks a whole family of words. The Latin root aud means “to hear,” and it shows up in audio, audible, and auditorium. This page has charts of common Latin and Greek roots, prefixes, and suffixes that you can download. Learn two or three roots a week and start noticing them in your reading. Doing this pays off on the SAT, too.
Works in science too!
Reading Comprehension
Beyond the Yellow Highlighter (Carol Porter-O’Donnell, English Journal)
Highlighting a whole page isn’t reading. It’s coloring. A high school English teacher wrote this article to show what purposeful annotation looks like. Students, skip to the bookmark on page 84, which gives you a simple list of what to mark before, during, and after you read. My favorite part is a student admitting that annotating made it too hard to fake-read, so he actually started reading.
Double-Entry Journals (AdLit)
This is the most useful note-taking tool for any novel unit. Fold a sheet of paper in half lengthwise. Write a quote and its page number on the left and your thinking about it on the right. By the time the essay is assigned, you’ll already have your evidence and the start of your analysis. The page also includes a template and a short video of a teacher explaining the method.
The One-Pager: Examples and Step-by-Step Guide (WeAreTeachers and the K20 Center, University of Oklahoma)
A One-Pager means fitting everything important from a chapter, book, or unit onto a single page with words, sketches, quotes, and questions. Deciding what makes the cut is where the learning happens. Look through the examples first, then use the step-by-step guide to make your own. You don’t need to be an artist.
Great for science and math too!
On the SAT
SAT Reading and Writing Tips (The Princeton Review)
Here’s one habit worth building now: on words-in-context questions, cover the answer choices, predict the meaning yourself, and only then look. If you plug in choices first, the wrong ones start to sound right.
Link to our Grammar Blog (Experienced Educators)
SAT grammar feels huge until you see how small it really is. This post breaks the grammar on the test into five groups of rules: sentence structure, punctuation, agreement, verb tense, and modifiers. It also explains what to practice for each one. There’s a section for parents, too.
Link to our Bad Reader Blog (Experienced Educators)
If you’ve ever called yourself a “bad reader,” this one’s for you. I take on three myths I hear all the time: that fast readers are better readers, that not reading for fun puts you behind, and that struggling in English class means you’ll struggle on the SAT. None of them is true, and I was living proof in high school.
