Several years ago, I was asked a very straight-forward question: What do students need to do to be successful in school? Seemed simple enough, proved to be quite complex! I spent the next few years working on this, and I think I have developed a pretty solid solution after working with hundreds of teachers and thousands of students. Once I developed my humble theory, I applied it to first and second year university students, graduate students, high school and grade school students, students in England, Tanzania, Jordan and Palestine, etc. Before I give you the link to an explanation of this theory, I have a few things to say about what I learned on the way.
First, I found out that I regularly used the "five stupidest words in school" - Read, Listen, Write, Remember, and Study (study being by far the stupidest). One of my students gave this group of of words its nickname because "you teachers always tell us to do these things but you never tell us how!" For example, we tell them to study, study longer, and to study harder, but we seldom break it down for them. Consequently, most students think studying is either reading the book or dutifully doing their homework. Remember the article about adolescent reading? That author said we should be ready and willing to "teach reading" through the grades, not just tell older students to read. Likewise, we should teach them to listen, to write, to remember, and how to actually study. We will talk about these things in the next month.
I have found that there are three things every successful student must do. If you would like to know about these three critical tasks, read this chapter I wrote for a study skills course at The University of Akron:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/39151356/CSRE2.pdf
It is a bit longer than other things we have read, and it is written for high school and college students, but it explains the "three responsibilities of a student." As always, I will be interested in your feedback :)
First, I found out that I regularly used the "five stupidest words in school" - Read, Listen, Write, Remember, and Study (study being by far the stupidest). One of my students gave this group of of words its nickname because "you teachers always tell us to do these things but you never tell us how!" For example, we tell them to study, study longer, and to study harder, but we seldom break it down for them. Consequently, most students think studying is either reading the book or dutifully doing their homework. Remember the article about adolescent reading? That author said we should be ready and willing to "teach reading" through the grades, not just tell older students to read. Likewise, we should teach them to listen, to write, to remember, and how to actually study. We will talk about these things in the next month.
I have found that there are three things every successful student must do. If you would like to know about these three critical tasks, read this chapter I wrote for a study skills course at The University of Akron:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/39151356/CSRE2.pdf
It is a bit longer than other things we have read, and it is written for high school and college students, but it explains the "three responsibilities of a student." As always, I will be interested in your feedback :)
students need to be successful in school, i think we have to understand how our students think and we have to make sure that they need everthing new and enjoyable to communicate with us properly
ReplyDeleteI have read the entire chapter yet, but in the Introduction where it says, "if you have zero self-discipline, no amount of intelligence would help because 0 x anything is still 0" completely sums up my experience 14 years ago when I initially started college.
ReplyDeleteI graduated high school in 1997 and moved away from everything that I knew to go to college. I had no idea what I was getting myself into. In high school, I could get by with doing very little and still receive A grades. In this new environment, I failed miserably. I had no self-discipline whatsoever. Initially I went to every class, but I did very little studying. I believed that I could get by with that, as I did in high school. Eventually, I started missing classes more and more. To make this a bit shorter, I ended my career at that school with a 1.32 GPA, losing all financial aid. Very sad, I know.
Here I am now at New River trying to repair the damage that I caused many years ago. The big difference now is that I have much greater self-discipline. I haven't missed a lecture or had a late assignment. I wouldn't call my discipline perfect though, I still have many problems with my mind wandering when it should be focused. I have problems with putting things off till the last second.
I appreciate that you have shared this chapter. I believe that I still need to teach myself greater self-discipline if I am going to succeed with my ultimate goals. Lets just hope that at age 33 I can still break these old habits. lol
I really enjoyed reading the chapter and i like the formula and the diagrams as well .
ReplyDeleteyou targeted the college students i think students who are preparing for TawjIhi exams can take advantage of it .
I liked when the mechanic demonstrated his task HAHAHA..
many teachers thought us the parts ,they didn't show us the relationships among them for example when we were young students teachers thought us the English words (to memorize) K LEVEL THEY NEVER LED US TO AA LEVELS WE MISSED ALLOT.
I TELL YOU THIS JOKE ;A TRAINEE ATTENDED A COMPUTER COURSE FOR ONE MONTH . WHEN HE FINISHED THE COURSE WITH SWOLLEN HANDS HIS MOTHER ASKED HIM HOW WAS THAT HAPPENED!! HE ANSWERED THAT THE TRAINER WAS HITTING OUR HANDS SHOUTING DON'T TOUCH.( APPLICATION LEVEL)
lol that is a great example, I might steal it and put it in my new book :)
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed reading this material and I still remember the way I felt coming across it for the first time with you last January. I was impressed; I guess I have not recovered yet ;)
ReplyDeleteI strongly agree with the idea of success being a combination of both self-discipline and intelligence. I also believe that we have more control over our self-discipline than we have over our intelligence, whatever that might be.
From my humble experience as a teacher and a mother, I completely agree with the fact that "tests aren't particularly smart. They measure things but often don't tell us why we passed or failed, and they don't distinguish between different types of failure". I have seen this many times and felt helpless many times, as I was unable to do anything in this regard to help my kids, at home and at school. I have never suffered the exam anxiety myself, but I have suffered it with my son Ahmad. He is very smart, yet suffers a high level of exam anxiety that I have failed to handle up tell now. Did I tell you that it was caused by a "careless teacher" who failed to realize his role in these kids' lives? Will tell you the story one day. That "great" teacher managed to shake my son's confidence in his abilities and since then the kid is never able to sleep if he has a math exam the next day!!
I do like the Loci method, and I believe it can be very useful if skillfully applied.
The last thing I want to comment on is the fact that language plays a very critical part in the learning process; in fact, it plays a very critical part in our lives. I came to believe that there are as many meanings of the words as many people that use them.
Good food for thought Michael, keep pushing :)
Football player thinks many tournaments to achieve and find rewards directly. But the teacher finds out that heroism and victory is made real when students are winning the battle of life ..
ReplyDeleteHello Michael,
ReplyDeleteThanks for this amassing information. While I was read CSRE, I imagined what has happened in our classes. What has happened in our brain is similar to the computer; input, processing, output.
In the learning process, you clarified the KCAASE. I think the first A should be the analysis; the second A is the application. I think analysis comes first.
(How does a student get down to the deeper level of learning?
I like this question because we are interested in. However, what come to my mind are the slow learners who are the majority in some classes.
Managing your memory I like this part very much. It attracts my attention. What I know is that our brain consists of a large number of cells. These cells have attachments (like dots) to connect them together. These attachments (dots) are responsible for the memory and the level of intelligence. How many attachments you have, how good memory you have. I f these attachments are damaged, they will not be renewed.
The only thing can support these brain attachments to be found again is reading THE HOLY QURAN.
Sara subhi
im late in writing comment but I tried to read this chapter several times..my little daughter kept on switching it off, but now i managed to finish it..it's really handy
ReplyDeletei think this has to be taught in EVERY school and college, specially for teaching literary subjects
really amazing
now i will build more organized rooms in my brain and in my students'
I AM REALLY IMPRESSED