Exam Preparation Reflection

Last year I tried something new with my seniors.   A lot of my students(and I'm sure yours too) tend to not realize that their preparation for a test has a lot to do with the outcome.  So many seem to think that you are just born with math ability and that directly determines how well you end up doing on tests.  I wanted them to be able to reflect on how they prepared for an exam, and how that led to their grade.  I started crafting a project for my students to help with this.  I had the following goals:

1) Students who give 100% in every class and don't have to study much shouldn't be punished
2) Students should have the option of not doing anything at all.  The fact is some kids don't study, and I want them to be able to face it without punishing them further.
3) Students who work hard should be rewarded.
4) Students would be forced to think about how they prepared while seeing their exam grade.

So, I decided that for the project they would hand in all of the materials they used to study and write up a one paragraph explanation detailing exactly what they did.  I made it clear that if they wanted to they could hand in a paper that said "I didn't do anything to prepare" and it wouldn't be detrimental to their grade so long as they did well on their exam.  The worst grade they could get on their project was their exam grade but they could do better on their project if they prepared well.  I gave them the previous year's exam as practice and gave them some general suggestions on what they could do to best prepare.

I thought this would be a good reflection for my students and that they would learn a lot and it was, but it turned out that I learned from it too.  I had been under the assumption that some students studied well, but struggled on my tests and that other students didn't prepare at all, but ended up doing well.  To my surprise, students' grades lined up almost exactly with the way they prepared.

We spent the whole class on the Monday after exams reflecting on exam prep. I opened by having each student write down their answers to the questions below.

In preparing for your exam...

What did you do that worked?

What did you do that didn't work?

What could you have done better?

I handed back their graded exams and we went through the following stats one at a time(red results are from this year):

Class Average: 83% (83.9%)
Highest grade : 93% (99%)
Average of Students who didn't turn anything in: 72%
Average of Students who "looked over their notes": 74%
Average of students who didn't do any of the practice exam: 75%
Average of students who did the easy problems for them on the practice exam: 79% (76.8%)
Average of the students who did all of the hard parts of the practice exam: 87.4% (88.2%)
Average of students who identified and targeted what was difficult for them: 90% (97.25%)

Then we discussed the results and talked about effective studying.  We talked about how "looking over notes" didn't do much of anything, and how even doing problems that are easy for them didn't really do much either.  We talked about how the largest jump came from the people who made sure to figure out how to do the problems that were harder for them and practiced those problems.  We went over some highlights of the Sweeney Study Method and their answers to the questions from the beginning of class, then used the remaining time to start on test corrections.

Overall, I was really happy with the results of this project.  It forced my students to see how their study habits directly influence their exam grades, and was an interesting learning experience for me as well.  I'd really be interested in seeing results from other classes, so if you try something like this, make sure to let me know how it works out!

The Sweeney Study Method

To be honest, I'm not entirely sure of the origin of my studying method.  My best guess is that I came up with it my freshman year of college and developed it as the years went by.  I probably used ideas that my teachers had been telling me all along in high school, but weren't necessary at the time since I found if I paid attention in high school, studying wasn't really necessary.  Since I came up with it to be as efficient as possible, I can pitch it to my students as a plan that helps you study quickly and effectively.

I usually don't have time to share the entire method with my classes, but I pick and choose parts to share with them to help throughout.  I do try to share as much as possible with my seniors as they will definitely need to figure out how to study in college if they've just been getting by without doing so in high school.

I wrote this as if talking to a student to make it easier to write.  Keep in mind this strategy works well for any subject.  It was actually more useful for my other classes as I clearly excelled in math.  So, on with the show...

Preparation:  Find somewhere quiet to work with no distractions.  No TV, no instant messages, no texts.  There are educational reasons for this, but the most important reason for me was that if I did that stuff, I would actually have to study for LONGER.  I could get more done in 10 minutes of good studying than I could get done in an hour of studying with distractions.  Why not just get the studying done quickly and then go have fun without having to worry about studying for so long?

Step 1:  Gather your materials.  In theory this should take almost no time to do.  Grab your book, notes and any old tests or quizzes that might be relevant to the test you're going to take.  In math especially, old tests and quizzes are incredibly important because not only do they provide you with a good prediction of what your teacher is going to put on the test/exam, they also tell you where you messed up the first time around. This is most likely where you'll mess up again!

Step 2:  Start with whatever you think is most important.  For instance, old tests would be most important when taking an exam.  Your book might be most important if your teacher takes a lot of questions right from the book.  Now, get a couple blank sheets of paper and a pencil.

Step 3:   Here's the important part.  You're not going to be studying or even reading everything.  It's time to separate the things you know from the things you don't know.  There's no point wasting time with the stuff that you're already sure of, you just want to focus now on the info that you don't remember already.  It's also important to be very honest with yourself.  Scan the book for bold words, information in boxes, diagrams and anything that looks important. Before you read the whole thing, ask yourself if you know it already.  For instance, you see "A quadratic equation..." If you can finish the sentence in your own words "an equation with an x squared in it" then you know it and you don't need to write it down.  It's also worth while to think about the way your teacher tests before writing things down.  You might forget some obscure detail that appears in your book.  Will your teacher test on it?  Maybe not.  If you're sure she won't, then skip it.

If you can't remember something, write it down in your own words. Never ever write down a definition directly from the book.  Math definitions in your book are oftentimes overly complicated and take a lot of decoding.  Instead of decoding the mystery of what the math book is saying every time you study it, translate it to yourself once and write that down.  You might use a picture to help.  Here's an example:  "A parabola is... shoot I don't remember.   The vertex of a quadratic function is... ugh i don't remember that either."  What you write only has to make sense to you.  Here's what I came up with:

So, let's say you read something and once you read it you suddenly "remember" it from class.  It's important to still write this down.  Here you are just familiar with the topic. You might remember it, but you shouldn't assume you're going to after reading it. After all, you did forget it once already didn't you?  So, write down the information you're just familiar with as well as the stuff you don't know at all.

With example problems, it's important to test yourself.  Try each example in your head or on paper if necessary BEFORE looking at the answer in the book.  This will help you decide what you don't know and need to write down, and help you focus on what you don't know.  If there are problems you don't understand and can't figure out: ask your teacher, ask a friend or ask Google.  In math you should really strive to understand every topic with help, and the test should just boil down to testing what you remember.

With old tests and quizzes focus on the problems that you got wrong, but take a look at some of the more difficult problems you got right as well just in case.

Writing down all the information you don't know won't take nearly as long as you think it might. With a focused goal and no distractions, you'll fly through the information. The best part is you're actually studying by putting things into your own words, testing yourself and writing things down.  Once you've written everything down, you're mostly done.

If your teacher allows a sheet of paper on an exam and it only took one piece of paper to write everything down, you're done studying!  Everything you don't know is on a sheet of paper and you can use that sheet for your final.  Sweet!

Step 4:  This step is key.  Now that you've used all of your resources to compile a list of everything you didn't know, get rid of all the resources(tests, books, etc).  Everything you need to know is on this sheet. Get a new blank sheet of paper and start from the top of your note paper. Now, repeat step 3 with your note sheet replacing your book/tests and a new sheet of blank paper.

As you work you're going to realize that you remember a lot of what you didn't know the first time around.  In fact, on your second sheet you'll probably have far less that half of what you had on your first sheet.  There will still be some things you just don't get, and that's okay, just write them down on your NEW note sheet.

You can repeat this part a third or even fourth time if you think it will be useful to you.  If your teacher lets you use an index card, you can stop whenever you think you can fit the information onto an index card, put it on and then you're done!

At some point, there will just be a few lingering things that you can't seem to get in your head.  If that's the case, move onto step 5.

Step 5:  Now that you have a short list of things you just can't seem to get into your brain, it's time to intensely focus on those topics. Use flash cards, make up mnemonics (PEMDAS for example), make up a song, do a bunch of practice problems or just do whatever you can to help you remember those last couple details.  I would usually just write the information over and over again because that seemed to work for me, but what's best for me not be what's best for you.  Try to do something here that suits your learning style.

Once you feel confident with everything, go have some fun!

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So that's it.  I hope this is helpful to you or your students.  Feel free to share this with your students or other teachers.  If you're feeling extra ambitious you could have students read this post, do the study method for a test or quiz and have them hand in their notes sheet(s) for a project.

I'll have a more studying tips in the future as well as studying project I gave a class last year with some really interesting results.  Stay tuned.

Questions, comments or suggestions? Let me know!

Selling study strategies (Math studying strategies pt. 1)

My school is very big on teaching kids strategies to help them succeed. This makes me happy because I feel that there are a lot of strategies for learning and test taking particularly in math that may have been obvious to me, but aren't obvious to many kids.  With my 9th and 10th graders, I focus mostly on how to effectively learn in class from your teacher and review strategies for test taking.  In 12th grade, I like to specifically take a decent chunk of time to model, explain and discuss how to learn and study from a math book.  I believe this is an essential skill as it is inevitable that at some point in college students are going to need to learn directly from the book.  This may be due to the fact that they didn’t understand the lesson, they misunderstood a portion of the lesson, or they missed a class entirely.  Surprisingly, many kids don't understand how to read from a math book or even how to study for math at all.  I feel certain that we have all had the experience of hearing a student say, "Well you can't really *study* for math..." or "I just look over my notes to study for a math test."

So, in my senior classes I take a chapter from one of our tests, and exclusively read through it together with the students.  We focus on figuring out what the book is saying, and how to organize and study the concepts in preparation for college courses.  I started this process today in class; and to be honest, we covered very little math material.  Nonetheless, I really believe that today was infinitely more important for them than any single math topic could ever be.

I'll talk about my specific process and strategies in upcoming posts, but I want to intentionally stop after I make my next point because it's very important:  I think many teachers go about teaching study skills in the wrong way.  There are a lot of great teachers out there providing countless useful studying strategies, and I'm not saying those strategies aren't equal to or more awesome than mine.  It's essentially the introduction that in my experience (as a student) needs improvement.

My selling of study strategies goes like this:

"Studying strategies are for people that don't want to study a lot! I promise you that at some point you're going to want to learn a lot about something in life whether you just have a strong interest in a topic, want to learn a specific skill, or just want to get a better grade in a college course.  I never liked studying. I wanted to spend my time going out with friends, playing video games, enjoying a nice sunny day, but definitely not studying! However, I still wanted to do well in my classes. What I realized is that if I used effective study strategies, then I really didn't have to study nearly as much in order to understand the material and be successful.  So again, good studying strategies are used because you don't want to spend that much of your time studying!"

At this point, I have their attention.  To really drive the point home, I give an example from my own experience.

"My first year in college I was in the First Year Science and Engineering dorm.  My floormates had mostly gotten 4.0's in high school, and there were a decent number of valedictorians.  With my mere 3.5, I was feeling a little intimidated.  Throughout the first semester I was always trying to get my friends to go out and do fun things, but was frequently met with "I've gotta study, you should try doing it sometime, Sweeney." This happened especially in the weeks leading up to exams. As the semester came to a close, a number of my friends were convinced I was going to fail.  What happened?  I was one of three people on my floor to make Deans list. (There was a dinner for us, so I knew).  I ended up doing better than a lot of intelligent classmates who had studied much more than I did.  Why?  I'm not a genius, and (as all of my students know at this point) I have a terrible memory!  The reason for my success was that I used effective study strategies and knew my strengths and weaknesses as a student when I did study."

I had pretty high hopes when I first decided to share this concept with my students a few years ago, and I wasn't disappointed.  They can't argue with the logic that good studying = less studying.  Many students just don't study. To me, it seems like if students feel they have to study a lot only to still maybe not do well, they're just going to choose to not study.  When I suddenly present this third option of studying not that much, but doing it really well it's effective enough to give me their attention and eager discussion of strategies for a few periods.  I can't be sure how much of the strategies we go over will stay with them, but at least I know for certain they're getting in there.