Sunday, and a study question.
Dec. 2nd, 2007 08:18 amWe woke up this morning to a blanket of white, about fifteen centimetres of it (if the forecast was right - my estimation skills are not up to figuring out the difference between ten and fifteen just by looking out the window.) Apparently the temperature is going to soar later in the day to a whopping seven degrees, which means rain and probably fog (though the fog wasn't mentioned, I've taught the grade five weather unit and I know what's likely in that respect. Warm air above + wet, cool ground + more precipitation = saturated air = fog.) So we get the pretty picture out the window in the morning but it will all be gone before school tomorrow. No snow day - but on the bright side, also no snowball fights.
I have a question for those of my friends who have done higher education, which I believe is almost all of you. (This is because I'm an intellectual snob and surround myself with others of similar intelligence level.) I heard a lot about study skills when I was growing up, but I wasn't specifically taught most of my study skills - I picked them up from a magazine cutout, or from a list of suggestions that was never acted on in class, or from my parents. My realization now is that my study skills aren't very good. The only reason I did so well in school is that I have a phenomenal memory for detail and an organized mind that stores facts in their proper place, without me really having to put them there consciously.
I was formally taught how to analyse a poem in my OAC English class - and I generalized that to any other literary analysis I needed to do, though I was never taught so clearly before or since. I was taught in grade 11 how to do an outline - and again, I generalized to the point where I don't even think about how I'm organizing my information, I just do it. But the steps I'm expected to go through when teaching these skills were never followed with me. I just happened to be one of the kids who got it, because my brain worked that way already. (This had a negative impact on my teaching for several years, btw - I expected everyone to be able to get it pretty quickly, and got frustrated with them when being shown once wasn't enough.)
So, my question is: how were you taught study and organizational skills? What processes did your teachers go through to make sure you had acquired - rather than simply being presented with - those skills? What additional teaching happened if you proved that you hadn't yet acquired them or were putting them into imperfect practice? At what point did you learn to plan and then execute an essay? At what point did you learn how to study for an exam?
I have a question for those of my friends who have done higher education, which I believe is almost all of you. (This is because I'm an intellectual snob and surround myself with others of similar intelligence level.) I heard a lot about study skills when I was growing up, but I wasn't specifically taught most of my study skills - I picked them up from a magazine cutout, or from a list of suggestions that was never acted on in class, or from my parents. My realization now is that my study skills aren't very good. The only reason I did so well in school is that I have a phenomenal memory for detail and an organized mind that stores facts in their proper place, without me really having to put them there consciously.
I was formally taught how to analyse a poem in my OAC English class - and I generalized that to any other literary analysis I needed to do, though I was never taught so clearly before or since. I was taught in grade 11 how to do an outline - and again, I generalized to the point where I don't even think about how I'm organizing my information, I just do it. But the steps I'm expected to go through when teaching these skills were never followed with me. I just happened to be one of the kids who got it, because my brain worked that way already. (This had a negative impact on my teaching for several years, btw - I expected everyone to be able to get it pretty quickly, and got frustrated with them when being shown once wasn't enough.)
So, my question is: how were you taught study and organizational skills? What processes did your teachers go through to make sure you had acquired - rather than simply being presented with - those skills? What additional teaching happened if you proved that you hadn't yet acquired them or were putting them into imperfect practice? At what point did you learn to plan and then execute an essay? At what point did you learn how to study for an exam?