Academic survival skills: rescuing students from academic catastrophe        

We have talked about flipped learning, finding one’s element and getting good ideas to change the world (see table of content). Now, we must come back to reality and I’d like to emphasize the importance of building a solid foundation, brick by brick, to develop good studying habits and having a good learning attitude. Some of the best advice to succeeding in school is to master the academic survival skills such as one’s ability to study effectively, to be organized, to be disciplined and to manage time well.

 

Students who hope to achieve success on the ambitious Common Core State Standards must first cultivate a set of general 'academic survival skills' that they can apply to any coursework (DiPerna, 2006). 

 

Below is an academic survival skills checklist that students can use to assess themselves and a good reference for teachers to check and to promote student responsibility. 

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(Edited and revised fromwww.interventioncentral.org)

 

The internet is so accessible nowadays with so many resources available and teachers can create customized student-skill checklists online. These checklists provide a starter set of strategies to deal with problems with homework, note-taking, organization, studying, test-taking and time management. Teachers can use the application to create and print customized checklists to assess the students in the class and to help them accordingly. A very good application is available at:http://www.interventioncentral.org/tools/

 

However some teachers do not do their jobs and even worsen students’ learning motivation. For example, many teachers do not allow students to bring home their exams so they cannot get the necessary help or double check their answers to ensure that they have understood the concepts. Also, some teachers don’t know how to respond to parents who want to help their kids improve at home while in a parent’s meeting. This checklist can act as a guideline, as a convincing communication bridge between students, parents and teachers to develop good study habits which will be important all throughout life. Through these learning tools, we all can empower teachers, parents and students alike to accomplish our shared goal of turning all the students into effective, self-managing learners. 

 

Is the current method that you use to work efficient?

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What is it that you need to work on?