DOVER GRAMMAR SCHOOL FOR BOYS

STUDY STRATEGIES

Sensory

• Physical sequencing activities using post-its or index cards laid out in order: learning twenty items of German vocabulary by writing each item and its translation on a post-it and placing them around the room, going to each in turn, practising there and then taking the post-its down and placing them on a sheet of paper and working through them in sequence, finally doing it without looking at the post-its – visualising the original layout as you go…
   

• Role-plays with the individual student acting out a succession of parts.

Colourful and Visual

• Use review posters in bold, primary colours and for a specific audience or purpose in mind.
   

• Coloured highlighters can be used to associate related topics or keywords.
   

• Use coloured highlighters to review vocabulary in modern foreign languages or classics – look for different colours for adjectives, verbs and nouns.
   

• Complete topic webs, concept maps and memory maps in bright, patterned colours.

Outrageous

• Rehearse a speech in the most outrageous voice manageable.
   

• Construct ‘outrageous applications’ for new information. How might you teach this topic to a Martian? How might a creature who had never been to this planet view the information? What might be the essentials that a Martian would need to know?
   

• List the key learning points from a unit of work (3 or 5 or 7 points), now think of some very famous people, or people you know well, and have them tell you one of the points each; imagine them saying the points, one each, in order, whilst sitting round a table, or singing at a concert, or going round a roundabout.

Thematic or Topical

• Link the new information to something you already know.
   

• Use concrete examples: the Tyrannosaurus Rex was 4.1 metres high, ‘that’s about the height of the ceiling here’; an acre is 4,840 square yards, or ‘about the size of a soccer pitch’.

Sequenced

• Learners use index cards and detail the stages of an experiment on the back. Mix the cards up, turn them over and explain each stage in turn. Events in a play or novel, historical events, laws and principles of maths or science can all use sequencing activities.
   

• Use flow charts (modelled large-scale on the floor) clock face diagrams (each hour has an event in the sequence).

Chunked

• Make ‘Family Trees’ of information using key words; each family is given a title or name which describes their generic grouping and then a mnemonic is devised using the sequence of first letters of each family. Whole units of work can be remembered this way.
   

• Use the magic numbers 1, 3, 5, 7. What is the most significant learning point here? What are the three essential pieces of information a learner would have to know? Identify five questions that you want to be able to answer by the end of this piece of work. What seven ‘bullet’ points must be included on a revision précis for fellow students?
   

• Concept mapping where keywords are grouped together around a key theme and on the connecting lines the ‘link’ between the word is explained. The map is then described aloud to a partner.