You hear a lot from your teachers about reviewing for tests. You have a test tomorrow, you should review tonight! They say. And you say, yeah, yeah, I will. And then you don't. Because you're not really sure HOW to review. What does review include? What are you actually supposed to be DOING?
Well, there is no easy answer to this. What works best for you may not work for Osmery. What works for Osmery may not work for Kadeem. Everyone has their own style. You may have to try out some options before you find something that makes sense. I will tell you how I review, and then I will show you some other options.
Step 1) You have notes, right? Your teachers are always telling you to take notes. If you don't have notes, you are SOL on this section, so skip it. So you get your notes, and make sure they're complete as possible. If you missed a day, call a classmate and see if you can copy theirs for that day. If your notes are mixed in with notes from another class, separate them out. Get them all in one pile, and make sure they're chronological.
Step 2) Get a highlighter. Start at the earliest notes you have, and begin highlighting. You should highlight no more than 20% of your notes on any given page, so choose wisely. This means you have to read your notes and decide WHAT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT INFO. Often this includes section titles, important dates, names, and formulas. If you're really struggling with a concept, you may wish to highlight an example.
When you're done highlighting a page, a few things should stand out-- the parts you've highlighted. This is how you boil down a mess of notes into a few short, essential points. These essential points you should begin to commit to memory.
Step 3) (Optional) Transfer your highlights onto a fresh sheet of paper. This is your review sheet. Ideally everything you've highlighted should fit onto one 8x11 sheet. If they don't, you have either highlighted too much material, or you're trying to review too much material at once. For big tests that cover a whole year's curriculum, you may need to make more than one review sheet, and you will probably have to spend more than one day reviewing.
Stay tuned for more review techniques.
-Ms Webster
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Thursday, May 27, 2010
TCB
Something you may or may not know about me is that I am an obsessive planner. I am always planning, even if I'm doing something else. I can be in the middle of a class at City College (yes, teachers go to school too), and while I'm listening to the professor lecture, I'm also looking at my calendar, planning out the rest of my night, my week, my weekend. In my mind, I'm planning out what to have for dinner, what to pack for lunch the next day, when can I fit in grocery shopping, how will I manage to get a work-out into my day, when I'm going to write that paper, how I'm going to get to my doctor's appointment.
I'm not saying this obsessive planning is a good thing, and you could even say it borders on craziness, but guess what: I get stuff done. I Take Care of Business (TCB). I do what I gotta do to do what I gotta do.
In order to facilitate this obsession, I have a complex system of datebooks, calendars, technological devices, highlighters, special pens, notebooks, and lists. This system I have honed for years, beginning in high school, which was when I discovered that there was no possible way I would manage to juggle homework, classwork, extracurricular activities, plus my family obligations, not to mention a social life. It was too much! It was just too much! Nobody knew what stress I was under! Teachers piled on work upon work, college loomed with its applications and essays, my parents wanted me to clean the bathroom and do the dishes, and my friends and I had big plans having to do with boys and rollercoasters. It was JUST TOO MUCH.
High school was overwhelming, to say the least.
So I started making lists, as a way to manage my anxiety. It seemed like a huge waste of time to be sitting in Spanish, bored out of my skull, when there was SO MUCH TO DO. This was deeply frustrating. Almost insulting. Drumming my pencil on the desktop did not satisfy my need to be DOING SOMETHING. So I started making lists. I began with To Do. That became very, very long. So I separated it into School Work To Do and Personal To Do. That was better. Once I made these lists, I had to decide how I would accomplish all the items on them.
For this I needed a calendar. So I bought a student planner. And thus was my lifelong devotion to planners born. Here was a way to visualize and manage my obligations. I didn't have to be overwhelmed by the pressure of everything I had to do, because I knew I only needed to accomplish 3 things today, and 3 tomorrow, and 3 on Friday, and then I would be through my entire list. As long as I stayed with my plan, I would get it all done.
And mostly, I stayed with my plan. Although there were days when I couldn't resist blowing off my obligations, and days when circumstances kept things from getting done, and I had to re-organize and re-prioritize and re-plan, it was mostly a relief to know there was a plan to follow.
When I hear my students talk about how impossible it is to get their homework done, because there's too much other homework, because their teachers are ODing, because we don't understand what it's like, in my head I'm like SHUT UP YOU WHINER AND GET A STUDENT PLANNER. You can get it all done. You just have to spend a little time planning.
You can print out a student planner template here.
-Ms Webster
I'm not saying this obsessive planning is a good thing, and you could even say it borders on craziness, but guess what: I get stuff done. I Take Care of Business (TCB). I do what I gotta do to do what I gotta do.
In order to facilitate this obsession, I have a complex system of datebooks, calendars, technological devices, highlighters, special pens, notebooks, and lists. This system I have honed for years, beginning in high school, which was when I discovered that there was no possible way I would manage to juggle homework, classwork, extracurricular activities, plus my family obligations, not to mention a social life. It was too much! It was just too much! Nobody knew what stress I was under! Teachers piled on work upon work, college loomed with its applications and essays, my parents wanted me to clean the bathroom and do the dishes, and my friends and I had big plans having to do with boys and rollercoasters. It was JUST TOO MUCH.
High school was overwhelming, to say the least.
So I started making lists, as a way to manage my anxiety. It seemed like a huge waste of time to be sitting in Spanish, bored out of my skull, when there was SO MUCH TO DO. This was deeply frustrating. Almost insulting. Drumming my pencil on the desktop did not satisfy my need to be DOING SOMETHING. So I started making lists. I began with To Do. That became very, very long. So I separated it into School Work To Do and Personal To Do. That was better. Once I made these lists, I had to decide how I would accomplish all the items on them.
For this I needed a calendar. So I bought a student planner. And thus was my lifelong devotion to planners born. Here was a way to visualize and manage my obligations. I didn't have to be overwhelmed by the pressure of everything I had to do, because I knew I only needed to accomplish 3 things today, and 3 tomorrow, and 3 on Friday, and then I would be through my entire list. As long as I stayed with my plan, I would get it all done.
And mostly, I stayed with my plan. Although there were days when I couldn't resist blowing off my obligations, and days when circumstances kept things from getting done, and I had to re-organize and re-prioritize and re-plan, it was mostly a relief to know there was a plan to follow.
When I hear my students talk about how impossible it is to get their homework done, because there's too much other homework, because their teachers are ODing, because we don't understand what it's like, in my head I'm like SHUT UP YOU WHINER AND GET A STUDENT PLANNER. You can get it all done. You just have to spend a little time planning.
You can print out a student planner template here.
-Ms Webster
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
8 more days til Regents
There are only 8 days of school left until Regents starts. Just sayin'.
If you're about to take Regents, you have two options: freak out, or, don't freak out.
I used to like having finals when in high school, in the same way that I liked it when the electricity went out for no reason, in the way that I liked snow days, in the way that I liked big, dangerous, important events: they gave me a break from the soul-crushing routine of every day.
So of course I was a LITTLE freaked-out, because tests are tests. But mostly I was excited to get a break from the routine of high school, the getting-up-early-every-damn-day, seeing-a-bunch-of-people-I-didn't-trust-or-enjoy, eating-the-disgusting-cafeteria-food, doing-all-that-boring-work, killing-homework routine. During finals, I didn't have any of that nonsense. I even had a brilliant excuse to get out of doing chores, baby-sitting my little brother, and even eating dinner with my family (which at 16 seemed like an incredibly tedious task). Instead, I retreated into monastic study, at the table in my room I had specially set up.
The study space set up was an important component of studying for finals. About a week before finals started, I moved a table into the middle of my bedroom. I cleaned the surface carefully. I got a desk lamp with a clamp and a hinged arm that I screwed onto the edge of the table. I got a straight-backed chair and a pillow for support. I stacked my textbooks neatly in one corner of the table. I stacked my class notebooks and binders in the other corner. I acquired two sharpened pencils with good erasers and two pens, one blue and one black, and four highlighters in different colors. These writing instruments I inserted into an empty jar and positioned the jar next to the notebooks. I got a big bottle of water and a bag of pretzels for reinforcement. Then I put on my favorite album (which at the time was Pearl Jam, I believe), and locked my bedroom door. Let the storm come. I was ready.
-Ms. Webster
If you're about to take Regents, you have two options: freak out, or, don't freak out.
I used to like having finals when in high school, in the same way that I liked it when the electricity went out for no reason, in the way that I liked snow days, in the way that I liked big, dangerous, important events: they gave me a break from the soul-crushing routine of every day.
So of course I was a LITTLE freaked-out, because tests are tests. But mostly I was excited to get a break from the routine of high school, the getting-up-early-every-damn-day, seeing-a-bunch-of-people-I-didn't-trust-or-enjoy, eating-the-disgusting-cafeteria-food, doing-all-that-boring-work, killing-homework routine. During finals, I didn't have any of that nonsense. I even had a brilliant excuse to get out of doing chores, baby-sitting my little brother, and even eating dinner with my family (which at 16 seemed like an incredibly tedious task). Instead, I retreated into monastic study, at the table in my room I had specially set up.
The study space set up was an important component of studying for finals. About a week before finals started, I moved a table into the middle of my bedroom. I cleaned the surface carefully. I got a desk lamp with a clamp and a hinged arm that I screwed onto the edge of the table. I got a straight-backed chair and a pillow for support. I stacked my textbooks neatly in one corner of the table. I stacked my class notebooks and binders in the other corner. I acquired two sharpened pencils with good erasers and two pens, one blue and one black, and four highlighters in different colors. These writing instruments I inserted into an empty jar and positioned the jar next to the notebooks. I got a big bottle of water and a bag of pretzels for reinforcement. Then I put on my favorite album (which at the time was Pearl Jam, I believe), and locked my bedroom door. Let the storm come. I was ready.
-Ms. Webster
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