Do you settle down to study and find that as soon as you open your book or laptop a wee voice in your head starts to whisper “But what about all those alerts you are missing?” “I wonder what everyone else is doing?” “Should I make myself a cup of tea now or in five minutes?”
Why not try this technique to help you focus and not get too stressed out with FOMO.
It’s very simple to do.
Let me know if it works for you and how you get on,
Take care,
Mrs Baird
If there was ever a word that would elicit a series of groans from any class, it’s study.
We all know that in order to do well in a subject we have to put the work in and that involves studying.
There are lots of study skills packages out there telling you that they are the “right” way to study- anyone who starts off telling you that fails to take in to account the needs of individual pupils.
Flexibility and finding your own way are essential components of studying. As you may know the library advocates the Ex-PLORE method – Plan, Locate, Organise, Represent and Evaluate. This is because Ex-PLORE is flexible and you can work within it at almost every level of study – right up to PHD.
Before you start anything you should PLAN – you probably wont but trust me it will save you time in the long run and isn’t that worth it?
One area of planning is simply how to set up your page before you start working. The more organised you are at this stage the easier everything else will be.
What does it look like? The example below is nice and basic but what you will see is that it keeps all your information on the one page – no more tabbing between sources and bibliographies and the original question – it is all on one page.
I like this system because it is flexible and it allow you to make up study pages that make sense to you and reflect the needs of the topic and or the question and its super simple.
For the example left I would have added in an extra space for sources but that’s the librarian in me.
You can make a page more specific to suit your needs. As shown below
You can see that the notes sections has been further split to include specific sections using more headings. Perhaps this reflects the original question or perhaps simply what the student needs to know for the final exam.
Think about what you need and section off your work accordingly and if you do it from the start you can even copy your sheets and cut them up to make revision notes.
https://handypdf.com/cat/cornell-notes-template
If you follow the link in the heading- it will give you more information and a simple web search will give you lots of options to choose from or you can make your own.
As the name suggests all this started with a lecturer; Walter Pauk at Cornell University so thanks to him for this simple, effective and flexibly system. ( see folks cite your sources!)
Top tips from Mrs Baird
Make the sheets colour co-ordinated either for each subject or each topic.
Make sure you number your sheets.
If you are filling in your sheets offline – take photos and upload them – just in case.
Take care and let me know how you get on.
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