organisation | James Kennedy

England’s Rugby Team warms up before training

You perform much better when you warm up before strenuous physical exercise. The same applies to Chemistry, too: if you warm up your brain before coming to class, you’ll feel more alert during the lesson and you’ll learn heaps more as a result. Here are some of the benefits of warming up before coming to class.

The best warm-up: read the textbook before class

One of the best warm-up drills is to read the relevant textbook section before going to class. Try to pre-read your textbook section no more than 24 hours before the lesson takes place; for example, during breakfast. Even though not all of the information made sense to me during this initial pre-read, it will at least make you understand the lectures a little better. Knowing key definitions before the lecture begins is crucial to understanding much more of what the lecturer is saying. You’ll also walk into the classroom with questions already in your head, ready to ask. This impresses the teacher and your classmates.

Learn more about how to use a textbook here.

During the lesson: make Cornell Notes

FOCUS during the lesson and make Cornell Notes while the teacher is talking. In addition to writing down key information the teacher tells you and writes on the board, write down any questions you might want to ask them later. Cornell Notes are an excellent way of doing this: you put your question in the Cue Column and leave the right part blank: you can fill this in with your answer at a later date (or by asking the teacher at the end of the lesson). Trying to formulate questions to pose to the teacher while you listen to a lesson is a good way of committing the information being learned to your long-term memory. This works because you’re invoking higher-order thought processes and learning more actively.

After the lesson: review your notes within 24 hours

Students who review their notes achieve higher grades than those who don’t. Repetition is key: the more times you see, hear or read something, the more you’ll remember it. Re-read your notes one day, one week and one month after you write them to keep them fresh in your mind.

Forgetting Curve — In the same way that repetitive songs get stuck in your head, repetitive study gets stuck in your head, too. Click to enlarge.

With this in mind, review your notes within 24 hours of the lesson and again at regular intervals afterwards. You’ll need to continually improve your notes after you’ve made them: answer questions you left blank in the Cue Column, insert definitions to confusing words, and label the diagrams you left blank during the lesson. Stay ahead of that forgetting curve!

Don’t have time to pre-read the textbook? Nonsense!

Skim-reading your textbook section over breakfast takes about 10 minutes, and reading and highlighting key definitions takes just another 2 minutes. By investing 12 minutes of time before class, you’ll learn more during the lesson and waste less time afterwards trying to decode what the teacher was saying. You’ll also have the confidence and the ability to answer to more questions in class. Your peers will start to see you as the person who always knows the answer to the teacher’s questions, which gives you a self-fulfilling reputation for being ‘smart’.

Reviewing and fleshing our your notes after class doesn’t take long, either. The exact time depends on the difficulty of the topic. Remember that the time you invest doing the above three things will pay off during the examination. If you don’t have time to do these three things, then make time. Get reading!

How do you warm up before class? What study habits help you the most? Share your ideas in the comments section below.

The Study Process diagram by James Kennedy — Click to enlarge “The Study Process” flowchart

It amazes me how many students get low grades because their notes are disorganised or because they get resources from the wrong places. If you’re not getting the grades you expect, and your study notes are a bit of a mess, follow this simple 5-step strategy to get more out of your VCE Chemistry lessons.

1) Annotate the textbook.

Your primary resource is always the textbook. Annotate your textbook with pens, highlighters and Post-it® Notes. Circle key words and draw a line through question numbers once you’ve completed them (see step #3). Cross out titles of sections that are not on your course: your teacher can help you with this. Put bookmarks (pieces of paper will do) at your current position in the textbook and at the corresponding answers page at the back. Annotate every page of the textbook before you learn a new topic in class. Annotate your textbook from cover to cover as soon as you can at the start of the year.

2) Make textbook summary notes on A4 paper.

Throughout the year, use your annotated textbook to make your own textbook summary notes. Many of these notes will have been copied from the whiteboard during Chemistry lessons, but you’ll still need to supplement these notes with things you learn from your own reading as well. I recommend writing these summaries on loose sheets of A4 paper and organising them in sequential order in a ring binder. Feel free to use both sides of the paper. Some students prefer to use A4 notebooks, which also works fine, but it’s very important that you don’t limit yourself to a “one page per section” rule. This becomes very restrictive later on.

3) Complete textbook questions and Checkpoints questions in an exercise book.

Third, you need a exercise book. This is an A4 notebook that you use to complete question sets from four main locations: (1) the textbook; (2) from any other worksheets your teacher provides; (3) from Checkpoints; and (4) from Lisachem and other textbooks. When you’ve finished a block of around 20 questions, check your answers using the answer keys provided and mark them very critically. This is an excellent learning exercise. Use a red pen to note where you went wrong, and mark your own work as harshly as the harshest-marking teacher you’ve ever had. Your teachers don’t have time to mark all of these questions for you; but if you don’t understand why you got a question wrong, do approach your teacher or tutor and ask for an explanation. They’ll be happy to help you out.

4) Everything else provided by your teachers is just supplementary material.

Finally, there are supplementary resources provided by your teachers. Even if you use these a lot in class, remember that they’re not your main study resource. Even if your teacher gives you printed PowerPoint slides, work booklets or lecture notes, they’re still just supplementary to the primary study resource, which is always the textbook. If your teacher gives you any of these extra resources to use in class, use them in class only, and at home, all of your studies should follow steps #1 to #3 above. Nothing replaces the textbook in terms of depth and accuracy. Extra materials provided by your teacher are always secondary to the main text.

5) Don’t trust resources that you find by yourself.

Most of the resources that students find by themselves will be either unprofessional or irrelevant to VCE. Resources from interstate or overseas might use different vocabulary or cover topics that are beyond the scope of our VCE course. Don’t spend time studying resources you’ve found by yourself unless your teacher or tutor has approved them.

Following these five steps should take about 3 hours per week per subject.

Remember that your textbook is your primary resource. Teachers and tutors just help to help bring the textbook to life: they help you to understand it faster and more comprehensively than you could on your own. Tutors provide 1-on-1 motivation and accountability by giving you personalised homework and questioning during your tutoring sessions. Tutors have the time to check your work carefully and get personalised feedback on all your written answers, which teachers seldom have the time to do.