Success in Memory & Time Management
3 Strategies for Reading Retention
Reading to Remember
10 Lies I Tell Myself About Time
Organize Your Homework and Watch Your Grades Improve!
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3 Strategies for Reading Retention
1
Pre-read to get your mind ready (warming up)
- Look at titles, headings, pictures, the introduction, preview questions
- Decide what you are going to be reading about
- Think about anything you already know about the topic
- Decide what you will probably need to know when you are finished
- Estimate how long it will take to read it and make a plan for reading
Only 2-3 minutes
2
Read actively to understand the content
- Divide the reading into fairly small sections
- Stop to restate in your own words to check understanding
- Visualize
- Compare and contrast with what you already know (from life, from text)
- Ask questions wherever you don’t understand
- Find answers
- Identify what you need to remember
- Make a study guide: mark 10% of text, mark margins, write a summary,
- Make review cards, outline, write and answer test questions
3
Review immediately after reading
- Review again within 24 hours
- Review briefly every few days
- Ways to review: data dump, shrinking summary, questions and answers, review
cards, practice essays
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Reading to Remember
You can use any one of these strategies to remember what you need to know. However, combining several strategies can be more effective.
1. Connect to what you already know.
2. Make sure you understand.
3. Reduce the information (select what you need to know).
4. Organize the information (and reorganize it).
5. Review effectively.
6. Connect to new learning.
7. Apply the information in some way.
10 Lies I Tell Myself About Time
1. Other people have more time than I have.
2. I will have more time later.
3. I have a lot more free time in college than I had in high school.
4. If nothing is due tomorrow, I do not have any work to do.
5. I do my best work under pressure.
6. I am good at multi-tasking.
7. I really do not need 8 hours of sleep.
8. I do not have time for good meals, exercise, etc.
9. Mom (my best friend, etc.) will understand if I do not find time to call.
10. It will not really matter if I use Sabbath to finish my homework for my religion class.
Organize your homework and watch your grades improve!
One way to do this is to incorporate a color coding system into your homework routine.
Here's how it works:
1. Gather a set of inexpensive, colored supplies.
You may want to start with a pack of colored highlighters, then find folders, notes, and stickers to match them.
- Sticky notes
- Folders
- Highlighters
-
Colored labels, flags, or round stickers (for sale items)
2. Select a color for each class. For example, you may want to use the following colors with a system like this:
- Orange=World History
- Green=Math
- Red=Biology
- Yellow=Health or PE
- Blue=Geography
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Pink=Literature
3. Make a mental connection between the color and the class to remember your system. For instance, you might relate the color green to money—to make you think of math. You may have to play around with the color system to make each color makes sense for each class. This is just to get you started. The color connection will be clear in your mind after a few days.
4. Folders: Obviously you will use each folder to keep track of homework for each class. The type of folder is not important; just use the type that is best for you, or the type that your teacher requires.
5. Sticky notes are useful when doing library research, writing down book and article titles, quotes, brief passages to use in your paper, bibliographical citations, and reminders. If you cannot carry around several packs of sticky notes, then keep white notes and use colored pens.
6. Colored flags are for marking pages or reading assignments in books. When your teacher gives a reading assignment, just place a colored flag at the beginning and ending points. Another use for colored flags is marking a date in your organizer. If you carry around a calendar, always place a flag marker on a date when an important assignment is due. That way, you will have a constant reminder that a due date is approaching.
7. Highlighters should be used when reading over your notes. In class, take notes as usual — and be sure to date them. Then, at home, read over and highlight in appropriate color. If papers get separated from you folder (or never make it into your folder) you can easily recognize them by the colored highlights.
8. Labels or round stickers are for your wall calendar. Keep a calendar in your room or office, and place a color-coded sticker on the day that an assignment is due. For instance, on the day you receive a research paper assignment in history class, you should place an orange sticker on the due date. This way, everyone can see an important day approaching, even at a glance. Color coding can come in useful in a number of ways, even for a very disorganized student. Just think: if you see a random paper floating around you will be able to know at a glance if it is a history note, research paper note, math paper.
- Phone: 269-471-6096
- Email: success@andrews.edu