Study Skills

Study Is Hard Work

This is one book I truly wish I had had when I was in high school and college. Although I managed to develop a method of study that proved effective, if I had been able to read this book first, I would have faced the task of studying with a confidence and surefootedness that I entirely lacked. Years of uncertainty and anxiety might have been transformed had I known then what Armstrong lays out so completely and clearly.

Study Is Hard Work was published too late for me to use, but not too late for today's high school and college students. It is already required reading in numerous prep schools, and hailed by college educators as fostering the best kind of academic success -- that founded on a love of learning and an ability to work hard and thoroughly.

I can't recommend this book highly enough. It is a truly great tool.

Research on Study Skills for High School Students

Over 100 pages highlighting what research and common sense say about study skills, learning styles and much more. This is really a wonderful handbook on everything that goes into successful study, and how adults can help our students achieve this goal.

Topics covered are:

• Waldorf social/emotional skills curriculum chart
• Creating a study environment
• Personal individual learning styles - hemispheric dominence other learning styles determining you individual learning style Gregorc Learning Style Delineator the mismatch line
• Listening skills
• Developing concentration
• Time management
• Reading understanding our eyes and vision hand pacing technique sustained silent reading program reading rate survey of reading strategies S3QR reading system summary of reaading steps vocabulary: a daily effort reading poetry reading mathematics and science how to read science
• Math skills
• Ten barricades to successful study
• Notetaking the Cornell system the mind mapping system
• Writing
• Proofreading
• Test taking strategies
• Mnemonics
• Life management stress management hints for your health
• The researcher's evaluation
• Reading evaluation
• Students' anecdotal evaluation
• Bibliography

Kinesthetic Learning in Adolescent Education

Kinesthetic (movement/touch oriented) learning is not only a dominant learning style for some people, it is an important facet of everyone's learning process - one that enables the student to retain and integrate the information learned. This extremely valuable paper explores how to integrate movement into academic subjects on behalf of the students' increased learning and more balanced psychology. Highly recommended!

From the author's abstract:

Movement education is often considered a peripheral subject in school curricula, yet it is essential for the teenager and it should form a central focus in education. Eurythmy and spatial dynamics are co-creators of a balanced and creative approach to movement educaiton, and they provide criteria by which other forms of movement can be introduced.

Students need not only a balanced movement education but also movement introduced into lessons, projects and demonstrations in order for them to integrate learning on both physical and psychological levels. Without such integration education imparts information which cannot be retained and remains undigested within the personality. Concepts that are not integrated, according to Rudolf Steiner, lay the basis for later anger toward the judgments of society.

In this paper examples of classes integrating movment include physics, earth science, history, eurythmy, literature, and biology. Suggestions for generating curricula are presented.