The most important part of studying actually occurs before you even start to relearn (or learn) the material. Today, we break down how to create a study plan that is mindful, achievable, and flexible.  We will also explore the reasons why a study plan might fail and what to do.

This may seem aspirational for some of you. Your students may inform you of about a test the night before; maybe you don’t know until after your child has taken it.  Conversely, your child's teacher may not be giving you notice.  That student isn’t quite ready for creating a study plan yet. That student should still be working with their family and team on learning how to take control of their time and their calendar. Once the student is successful in these areas, there will be no more academic blindsides. For help and advice on how to get your student ready for this episode refer to Episode 02 of the podcast or our blog from May 15, 2018, where we talk about using a calendar and managing time.

There are several steps for a student to take before they actually embark on studying. In this blog, we will outline the five steps for creating an appropriate study plan. Just so you are aware, most students skip steps one through four. This is why it is really important to understand that it is not about the time spent on studying, it is about the way in which the studying is being done. Quality over quantity.

The five steps students should take when building a study plan:

Find out when a test is and put it into your calendar:

Your calendar should always be booked with any and all commitments. This means afterschool sports, religious programs, clubs, tutoring, etc. This makes it easier to create an appropriate and achievable study plan.

As soon as you know out about a test, take stock of what you know and what you do not know:

This is a very important step for most students since they tend to spend time studying what they already know.

To help with this step, we like to use what we call the “red right/green light” technique. For this strategy, you use different colored highlighters to categorize information. You use a green highlighter to highlight the material you already know and feel confident about. You do not need to spend a ton of time on anything you already know (highlighted in green). A yellow highlighter can be used for information that is somewhat understood, but is not yet a strength. Then, a red or pink highlighter is used for the material that you do not know and really need to spend time with so that they can be turned into greens. The information that is highlighted in red can be broken down into what the student does not quite understand versus what they just do not know at all. Before step two is complete, students should go through their study guide and write and label how many greens, how many yellows, and how many reds they have. Therefore, when they are done with this step, they are able to tally up how many of each color they have.

Chunking:

Chunking means breaking the big whole into tiny, small, easy parts, making it much more manageable and doable. Which will, in turn, make the work a lot less aggravating.  Dividing the greens, yellows, and reds from step 2 by how many actual days you have to study is crucial.

Calendaring the plan:

To be clear, at this point, the student has not yet begun actually studying any material. These are the actions that must take place before that starts. In this step, you must ALWAYS start with the day of the test and work your way backwards. For example, let's say there is a test that is ten days out. For day nine, which is the day before the test, you calendar nothing. This is a Buffer/Review day. No new information should be learned on this day. This means that all the material by this day should be greens. Now,