Study Skills for Final Exams
Finals are quickly approaching and the question on many instructors’ minds is how to prepare students for the final exam.  Many teenagers have little experience studying for comprehensive tests. The amount of material on a study guide can be overwhelming and I’ve had many students look at their review guide and just decide to not bother and hope for the best. High school students are amazing at making excuses for not studying. One excuse I hear frequently is “I do worse on tests if I study.”   The sheer numbers of students who try this on me suggest that it’s one that works on parents.   Needless to say, I return such silliness with the deadpan stare and a clipped “really.”  Followed up with the dramatic raise of the eyebrow and then a “then you’re doing it wrong.”
Once you get past the excuses, and this may even require a bit of a pep talk to convince your students that studying will improve their scores, you will need to give them strategies to study. Most teenagers don’t come equipped with these strategies, and they will earnestly not even know where to start. Always give them a review guide, though the tone of this guide can vary. You can make a list of things they should know, with a very general list.    I often include a little box at the end of each item, so that students can check the box off when they are confident they know the topic. For example:
1. Know the parts of the cell, their functions and be able to identify them on a diagram.
2. Understand the endosymbiosis theory.
3. Outline the steps of the scientific method; give an example of how it is used to solve real-world problems
Alternately, I make review guides with very specific questions that are on the test. . Younger, less experienced students get more specific review guides, where the questions on the guide are very similar to the questions on the tests, such as the Biology 1 Final Exam Review Guide.   Here the questions are more specific, for example:
1. What is the function of the mitochondria? _______________
2. What it the part of the cell that makes proteins? _______________
3. This theory suggests that eukaryotes evolved from prokaryotes: _______
The difference here is that younger students aren’t overwhelmed; they can take it one step at a time, look in the books on the cell chapter and easily find those answers. The general review guide tends to overwhelm freshman students; they don’t know where to start, they don’t know how many parts to include or how detailed they need to be.
Now the students have a review guide, it won’t be enough to just hand them this 10 page document and say “good luck”. It may sound ridiculously simple, but I need to teach them pacing mechanisms. In some classes, I may also need to incentivize the review guide. Most kids have the attitude that they won’t do anything unless there is some perceived benefit. To a teenager, doing well on a test that is a week away isn’t enough of an incentive. In their mind, they might do well without doing the review guide. They may have actually convinced themselves that studying will make them do worse. Again, older kids seem to have a stronger grasp of action and consequence than younger ones.  So to give them a little motivation, I assign a point value to your review guide, even if it’s something as minor as 5 pts per page. I can pace students by assigning one page (or section) per day.   In fact, I don’t even  grade them for accuracy, just walk around with a clip board, check to see if they did it, and give them 5 points.  Then I’m free for the rest of the period to go over the review sheet they should have already done so they can correct any errors.
Once the review guide is accomplished, I go about teaching students strategies for self testing.   Sometimes we just assume students have figured this out, but many have not.  They will write down the answer, move on and never test themselves. It’s almost as if they imagine that the act of writing it down it the act of studying.  Teach them to read the questions, with their hand over the answers and see if they can fill in the blanks. Show them the art of making note cards to quiz themselves. Most importantly, emphasize that there is a difference between writing down the information, and actually learning it.
Quiz in class, orally and with questions on the board. The first thing they should see when they walk in is a question, the eyes are drawn to the board and the brain can’t help but think about the answer.  Repeat the questions just to see who is paying attention.  Most importantly, don’t leave the  students on their own; help them learn how to learn.
November 22, 2010
· 
smuskopf · 
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Tags: exams, finals, guide, help, skills, strategy, study · Posted in: Best Practices
