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Tips for Drafting a Study Plan for Final Exams

11/29/2018

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Finals are coming! We assume students have the skills and tools they need to make connections and deepen their learning independently, but many times freshmen have never been exposed to skills and strategies to use.  Creating a study plan is a first step students can take to help them experience greater success. 
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Creating a study schedule is a time management method that can reduce a student's level of stress by teaching them how to set aside the necessary amount of time for studying, and also how to use that time wisely.

When reading about ways to help our students begin to get organized I came across a blog written by a student at the time in Portugal. She shares from a student's perspective 10 Essential Steps to Creating a Study Schedule.   Students love to hear and learn from other students! 

A study plan can be created on paper or electronically. Need a template or a place to start? Below are templates you can make a copy of. Feel free to use as is or edit.


  • Starting with your hardest course, work backwards from the exam date and assign study chunks to individual blocks in the schedule (If using a paper schedule use a pencil because you may need to revise!)
  • Schedule your peak learning times for your hardest studying. 
  • There is no perfect plan: try to spread your studying over a period of 5 days or more, and reach your targeted number of study blocks.
  • Be sure and schedule breaks and things to look forward to doing. 
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Download a template to use on paper. Remember to use a pencil, you'll be making adjustments as you go. 
Make a copy of an digital template that you can update along the way. 
Encourage students to create a study plan that is reasonable  Keeping in mind the amount of time they need to study and review each day, students also need to realize that, blocking off four hours, for example, with no break will set them up for failure. 

Develop a plan to communicate and share information with parents also. As we began to post our Finals schedule we also began to push out information to our parents through our weekly eNews.  We also have a Study Skills and Resources section available on the Cardinal's Nest our Freshman website. 

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Once a student has their study plan in place, some helpful reminders are:
  • Place the calendar or printed schedule in a visible location so that it is easy to see or if the schedule is electronic have it bookmarked and easily accessible. 
  • It is important to review, study, and self-test. First, spend a few minutes reviewing the material you studied during the previous study block; then spend most of your time reviewing the current chunk of material; then spend some time testing yourself on that material.
  • Take the breaks that they have scheduled into their study time. 
  • Find a place or environment that is right and comfortable to study and concentrate. 
  • Include exercise and healthy snacks in your break schedule. 
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Creating a plan is the first step. If you have additional suggestions or resources for students to use, please share them below so that we can all learn and help students draft a study plan that will help them be successful.  Next post I'll focus on Retrieval Practice and how it plays such an important part in making learning stick.
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Practicing Gratitude... A Worthwhile Journey

11/18/2018

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This fall we had the privilege of learning from Brené Brown and her team. An experience that I am truly grateful for! One of my many takeaways from our time together was that Dr. Brown shared that her research has shown that practicing gratitude invites joy into our lives. I wanted to learn to actively practice gratitude and so I set out to do just that. The #CompelledTribe's blogging topic for November is gratitude, so I have the perfect reason to reflect on my journey. 
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At first, I tried to intentionally jot down things that I was grateful for as an entry in my bullet journal each day. This was helpful in that it slowed my thinking down and gave me a time to focus on what I was grateful for.  My gratitude reflections were mixed in with other thoughts and notes from my day.  I tried to read through my entries once a week, but it wasn't a great system. 

And then I discovered an App, 
Grateful, A Gratitude Journal,  and added it to my iphone. The App notifies me at the same time every day to stop and write. This practice helps me to acknowledge the small and large things in my life that I am grateful for.  The journal has a place for me to write a little or a lot. I can also attach photos to my posts, which I love. My photos range from people & places, to screenshots of texts or social media posts. The mixed media helps me to capture more moments than just being able to enter text. Looking back at the many moments I have recorded, some of the simplest entries are the most profound to me. The journal helps me focus on what really matters.
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I believe when Mark Twain said, “I can live two months on a good compliment,” he expressed the powerful impact kind words can have. He felt noticed and valued.  I believe that when we show gratitude to a person by extending a genuine compliment a bond is strengthened, trust is built, and conversation encouraged.

My journey this year has shown me that practicing gratitude is a cycle, you internalize and recognize a moment or situation and then you share it back to the source.  Looking for the good in others or situations and showing appreciation costs us nothing.

I am going to continue down this road and I hope to get stronger in my practice. I would love to hear your story and any tips you may have to pass along.

Sharing this as a resource:
​Books by Brené Brown  (They are all great!)


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7 Instructional Strategies That Bubbled to the Top...

11/16/2018

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We know that the best teachers are masters of their content and material, but they also know a lot about the process of learning. They have at their disposal a repertoire of instructional methods, strategies, and approaches.  Master teachers remain committed to developing their content knowledge, while they continue to cultivate their repertoire of instructional strategies.  
 
We use the PLC model at our high school and our teachers have a common dedicated 50 minute period daily to plan and collaborate. Once a month our students have an early release and our faculty has a three-hour window to come together and engage in professional conversations and learning.  Our learning this past week revolved around instructional strategies. Our goals for this learning experience were two-fold:
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  • Spend time in conversation with your PLC focusing specifically on instructional strategies and not content.

  • Explore Lead4ward as a resource and collaborate on strategies that might engage students in a variety of ways in your classroom.
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Check out the top 7 strategies that our teachers chose as ones they’d like to try or revisit in their classroom to check for understanding. There were far more than 7 but these got the most “mentions”.  These strategies were curated by Learn4/forward and available in their app and on their website.

7 Little Words
  • Students summarize the content taught with 7 words
  • Students reveal their words, discuss similarities/differences, and revise their original list as appropriate

Analogy Challenge
  • Students complete the analogy stem below
  • » content just taught   is like   real life idea   because __________.
  • students share analogy with a partner and explain the relationship

Graffiti
  • students draw a one-minute “graffiti” representing a major concept
  • students write 1 sentence explaining or justifying their graffiti
  • students turn and talk to share responses

Hot/Cold
  • students draw a T-chart labeling “HOT” on the left and “COLD” on the right
  • teacher lists words/ideas on the white board, and students write those ideas in either the “hot” or “cold” column
    • » HOT = list all the words/ideas that make complete sense  
    • » COLD = list all the words/ideas that are still confusing
  • share responses and coach each other on the “cold” areas

Mind Map Learning
  • students write an important word or concept in the center of a piece of paper
  • use words, colors, symbols, or other visuals connected to the word
  • write a summary statement of their essential learning

Picture is Worth a Thousand Words
  • teacher shows a visual/picture relating to an important part of the lesson
  • students write a description of the visual/picture
  • pair up, share, make connections to other vocabulary, processes, and content
  • draw a conclusion about the importance of the visual/picture ​

​Ping-Pong Summary
  • student partners decide who is ping and who is pong
  • ping summarizes/teaches the content just learned
  • pong adds to, clarifies, and extends the content just shared
  • reverse the roles in the next summary
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In addition to these strategies, teachers considered the idea of having a “no opt out” classroom.  Intentionally using instructional strategies that bring all students into the learning and check their understanding help create classroom environments where all students are engaged.

.A big shout out to @m_squaredBHS and @bellairesoccer  for working with me on this! I used a Google Site to organize the content for teachers and we shared the link out to each faculty member. Our PLC leaders lead their teams. What I appreciated the most about the learning experience was listening to the conversations that each PLC engaged in in different rooms across the campus. I am grateful for the commitment to learning that our community engages in. 

We asked teachers to reflect and to give us feedback. Below I’ll share a few of the responses that teachers submitted focused on instructional strategies. Full disclosure, the feedback was across the spectrum. There were people that didn’t value the experience and would have preferred to have been working on their final exam.  If you’d like to see our feedback & wrap-up form, click here.  
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“I really want to make sure I am using daily checks for understanding. I currently use fist to five, but like some of the other methods I have learned of. I particularly like the analogy prompt. This is being covered like ______________ because they both __________. It will be useful for comparing how different functions behave the same way and how techniques used to solve one type of equation will also apply to other equations.“

“Lead4ward is a really great tool, and it is something I need to commit to referencing more often. I do think that some of these strategies are semi-elementary, and that some of my students would give me a "what is this" look, and would totally disengage. That being said, the hot/cold is really great for vocabulary, and I can definitely see myself using some of these strategies on a daily basis. Strategies like graffiti really allows students to be a little more visual and creative in their understanding, as that will play to many of their strengths. After all, a picture is often worth 1000 words, and can be just as telling as the written word.”

“I loved the opportunity to revisit strategies that I know are valuable but sometimes get lost in the everyday classroom rush to get things done. Being purposeful in choosing strategies that will engage our ELs in academic discourse is so important to their language development. “

Asking for feedback is part of what we consider part of our learning cycle with our faculty and staff and I highly encourage everyone to incorporate it into all professional learning opportunities. 
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If you have additional instructional strategy resources please share them!
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