Secrets from the Girl Who Made the Study Guides

There came a point in high school when the study guides I made for each test ended up getting shared with half the class––which I think meant I was doing something right. My study skills worked really well for me in high school, so I thought: instead of making a list of advice that the top Google search results could probably produce, let me share what worked best for me––or at least provide a convincing argument for some of my favorite tried-and-true study tips.

1) Make your planner work for you.

While I was lucky enough to have had a fourth- and fifth-grade teacher who gave me the planner bug early, high school was when it really became crucial for me to keep track of my assignments somewhere other than my mind. For me, the key was putting not only my assignments, but also their due dates, in writing AS SOON AS I RECEIVED THEM. This kept my quizzes, projects, and readings from slipping my mind until I faced an expectant teacher or “late” notification. 

Throughout high school, my physical, paper planner was my best friend. Since each spread of two pages in the planner spanned a week, I would write in my assignments on the day they were assigned and highlight them with a line (color-coded by class, of course) extending to the day they were due––simply and clearly conveying the assignment, its due date, and how long I had to complete it.

However, a paper planner won’t be the best choice for everyone these days––even myself! There came a point in college when I simply wouldn’t carry my planner with me as often, or I wouldn’t have the space on my tiny lecture-hall desk to take it out and write in my homework during class––so I shifted methods. Nowadays, I keep track of my tasks in a Google calendar, making each task an event that spans the amount of time I estimate it’ll take.

An actual sample of my freshman-year-of-college planner. If you look closely, you’ll spot that this was the point in my life where my daily chores started to merge with my homework assignments. Get excited, college-bound students!

All in all, I’d encourage high school students to experiment with various planner methods to find the one that works the best for them––but above all, to keep all of their assignments and due dates centralized in one easy-to-access location.

2) Break your assignments down.

I cannot emphasize enough how much of a game changer it is to break work up into smaller, more achievable goals, and to treat each of those goals as if it was its own assignment. 

For example, if I had to write an essay for English class, I might break it down into these goals, scheduling each one (using my trusty planner) for a different day:

1. Brainstorm: Gather and sort evidence into “buckets.”
2. Write the thesis statement. (Yes––it IS valid to write one sentence and then be done for the day. I did it often!)
3. Complete the outline.
4. Write the first two body paragraphs.
5. Write the last body paragraph.
6. Write the introduction and conclusion.
7. Proofread and submit!

When I looked down at my planner and saw a single paragraph due the next day, I felt so much less daunted than seeing an entire essay due in a week. Plus, this method doesn’t just work for essays––planning to study just one unit a day for a test kept me from pulling all-nighters to cram. The challenge, of course, is making sure you have enough days to split the assignment over––which leads me to my next tip…

3)  Start early. (Seriously. Just do it.)

I’ll keep this one short, since we’ve all heard it a thousand times. On the day your student gets their assignments (or, as a general rule, one week before a due date or a test) they should break down and write down the work. Remember––it’ll be hard to start no matter what, but it’ll feel like less work if they start early. If it helps at all, ask your student the motivational question I still use to stop myself from leaving dirty dishes in the sink: Would it be so bad if I just did it now?

4) Take handwritten notes.

There’s a whole body of research supporting the claim that handwriting your notes will help you retain them much better than typing––specifically, we know that the act of writing contributes to greater and broader brain activity in the regions responsible for sensory processing & memory. And, good news for tablet owners––one study found that using either a physical writing tool or a stylus correlated with greater memorization (as well as a more positive mood while learning)!

Beyond the data, I think that one of the reasons handwritten notes worked so well for me was that I simply couldn’t write as fast as my teacher spoke. As a result, handwriting forced me to select and synthesize the most important parts of a lecture from the moment I heard them, rather than typing each word up without a bit of processing. Plus, having a fabulous notetaking method didn’t hurt––I’ve carried the method I learned in elementary school, “Stars, Dashes and Dots,” through to college and beyond (thanks, Mrs. D’Arceaux). In this system,

• Stars are for topics,
  • dashes are for important ideas, terms or events within that topic,
    • and dots are for supporting details.

Of course, I’d adapt this system as needed––most commonly, I’d underline key terms and use an asterisk (*) instead of a dash or dot when I was writing down a definition. Most of all, asterisks were a great way to mark those spare pieces of information that teachers preface with “I’m not telling you this is going to be on the test, but…”

5) Annotate your reading. (Again. Just do it.)

First of all, your student needs to DO the reading. (Plenty of students try to skip this part.) Then, they can use selective annotations to ensure that they actually understood what they read. Ask them: does highlighting half the page help you remember what that page was about when you look back at it in class? 

Remind them not to be afraid to take notes in their own voice, to use their own abbreviations, or to include their own commentary––as evidenced by the fact that I wrote both “emo” and “salty” in the margins of my personal copy of Hamlet to describe various characters. Ultimately, what matters is for your student to take the kind of notes that will resonate with them.  

6) Utilize Text-to-Speech for Essay Writing

Encourage your student to utilize new technology features to help them edit their work. Especially if they are editing a long paper or something they’ve been working on for a long time. 

Students can paste their essay into a text-to-speech reader (for me, control-clicking on the selected text in the “Stickies” app on my Mac was enough). Then, they can sit back and take notes as they listen to their writing. Where are there typos? Where does it sound clunky? This method helped me catch errors that my eyes were too tired to find while reading on a screen, as well as improve the overall flow of my writing.

Last, but not least,

7) Make the study guide.

If I were to tell my high school peers what my testing “secret” was, I’d probably say that making the study guide they asked to borrow was really most of the work. That act––combing through my notes, condensing them down to the most important details, organizing them into the proper topics and chronological flow, and anticipating the questions that might be asked––familiarized me with the material inside and out. 

While I hope some of these study tips resonate with your student, it’s important to remember that each student is built differently and what works for one student may not work at all for another. Luckily, high school is the perfect time for students to experiment with different study methods and find the strategies that work best for them. It may take some trial-and-error (and your student may need some encouragement from time to time) but the sooner they can figure out their best study skills, the easier school (and life!) will be for them.