Free-Reprint Article Written by: Susan Kruger See Terms of Reprint Below.
***************************************************************** * * This email is being delivered directly to members of the group: * * [email protected] * ***************************************************************** We have moved our TERMS OF REPRINT to the end of the article. Be certain to read our TERMS OF REPRINT and honor our TERMS OF REPRINT when you use this article. Thank you. This article has been distributed by: http://Article-Distribution.com Helpful Link: The Digital Millennium Copyright Act - Overview http://www.gseis.ucla.edu/iclp/dmca1.htm --------------------------------------------------------------------- Article Title: ============== Study Skills Are Boring! Or, Are They? Article Description: ==================== In our current 'Information Age,' study skills have an important role to play in our middle schools and high schools. Explore what they are --and are not-- and how they can empower our next generation. Additional Article Information: =============================== 815 Words; formatted to 65 Characters per Line Distribution Date and Time: 2008-04-04 11:12:00 Written By: Susan Kruger Copyright: 2008, All Rights Reserved Contact Email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Susan Kruger's Picture URL: http://www.soarstudyskills.com/SelfPictureBW.jpg For more free-reprint articles by Susan Kruger, please visit: http://www.thePhantomWriters.com/recent/author/susan-kruger.html ============================================= Special Notice For Publishers and Webmasters: ============================================= If you use this article on your website or in your ezine, We Want To Know About It. Use the following URL to let us know where you have used this article, and we will include a link to your website on thePhantomWriters.com: http://thephantomwriters.com/notify.php?id=5915&p=load HTML Copy-and-Paste and TEXT Copy-and-Paste Versions Of Article Are Available at: http://thePhantomWriters.com/free_content/db/k/study-skills-are-boring.shtml#get_code --------------------------------------------------------------------- Study Skills Are Boring! Or, Are They? Copyright (c) 2008 Susan Kruger, All Rights Reserved SOAR Study Skills workshops http://soarstudyskills.com/ Study skills are boring! That is what most students tell me when I first meet them. Boring!? These are skills that can help them get better grades and spend less time on homework how can they be boring? Honestly, there is a good explanation for the bad rap that study skills have developed over the years because a lot of boring things are labeled as study skills. Learning how to use guide words in a dictionary...a necessary skill, but boring! SQ3R a reading strategy with many merits, but leaves me asking, Who wants to take the time to do all five steps? Boring! Identifying the main idea and supporting details on endless worksheets? Another important skill, but still boring. There is a broader and more important role study skills should be playing in the lives of our middle and high school students, especially in our current Information Age, when we must prepare students for many careers and jobs that do not even exist yet. Study skills are: * The skills required to be an independent learner. * Skills that build confidence. * Skills that develop efficiency. * Skills that improve performance to prepare our students for high-stakes tests and the globally competitive job market of the future. * Skills that enable students to be proactive, make good decisions, and think critically. The LAST thing they should be is boring! We were all born with a natural desire to learn. Infants, toddlers, and pre-schoolers love to explore their world and take pride in learning new things. Just yesterday, my four-year-old was so excited about learning that he stood on top of his chair and raised both arms in triumph exclaiming in a na-na-na-na-na-na tone, I learned a new wo-rd! I learned a new wo-rd! THAT was utter exhilaration over learning! But, sometime in the elementary years, most students lose that enthusiasm for learning, usually because they lose all of their choices. Learning becomes dictated by their teachers, school districts, and state-mandated curriculum. They are suddenly swallowed into a bureaucracy of texts, tests, and lectures that would bore any rational human being. Much of these mandates and lack of choices are and will remain out of students control, but there is a vital component we can offer students to bring some pizzazz back to learning. Teach them study skills principles and strategies to be organized and learn efficiently. Show them they have the power to beat the system. Well, maybe not beat the system, but at least work with the system strategically to be successful. When strategic learning enters the picture, students regain some control. They develop personal power. And they learn important life-long skills that will someday help them manage a home and career. These may sound like lofty concepts, but they have real, concrete implications. For example, as parents and educators: * We can acknowledge that organizing papers and school-work is difficult because traditional systems actually complicate the process. We can then explore principles for organizing and strategies to simplify the process. * We can acknowledge that text-books are boring. But, if students understand how to maximize their brains learning process, they can be strategic readers and exponentially increase their reading comprehension while only reading a fraction of the text. * When we want to say, Why cant you plan ahead?! we can pause and understand that they have never really learned how to plan ahead. Armed with that perspective, we can help them discover how to prioritize their time and think proactively. There is a commercial that depicts two professionals heading into their office building at the beginning of the day. They are both neatly groomed and dressed professionally. You can presume from their appearance and surroundings that they are well-educated people. They are both half-way up an escalator when the escalator suddenly stops. They look shocked and bewildered. I dont need this! complains the woman. Figures! grumbles the man. They look around in panic and start feeling around for their cell phones, but both discover they have forgotten their phones at home. As the commercial continues, these two smart professionals remain stranded for what appears to be hours, yelling and screaming for help and wallowing in their unfortunate sorrow that they are stuck on an escalator. Thats right its an escalator, NOT an elevator. Are you wondering why they dont just stand up and walk off? Thats the point of the commercial...some solutions are so blatantly obvious to some, but not to all. Students, in particular, are commonly stuck on their own escalators, running for help every time they get stuck and not employing any strategies or critical thinking to move forward. Arming students with study skills --skills for thinking strategically about organizing, managing time, and learning-- gives them the power to simply stand up and walk off their own escalator. Taking control over their learning? Learning how to play in the system with strategy? There is nothing boring about that! --------------------------------------------------------------------- Susan Kruger is the author of "SOAR Study Skills; A Simple and Efficient System for Earning Better Grades in Less Time". Get Susan's FREE Homework Rx Toolkit, featuring "25 Ways to Make Homework Easier...Tonight!", at her website: http://soarstudyskills.com/ --- END ARTICLE --- Get HTML or TEXT Copy-and-Paste Versions Of This Article at: http://thePhantomWriters.com/free_content/db/k/study-skills-are-boring.shtml#get_code ..................................... TERMS OF REPRINT - Publication Rules (Last Updated: May 11, 2006) Our TERMS OF REPRINT are fully enforcable under the terms of: The Digital Millennium Copyright Act http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c105:H.R.2281.ENR: ..................................... *** Digital Reprint Rights *** * If you publish this article in a website/forum/blog, You Must Set All URL's or Mailto Addresses in the body of the article AND in the Author's Resource Box as Hyperlinks (clickable links). * Links must remain in the form that we published them. Clean links should point to the Author's links without redirects having been inserted into the copy. * You are not allowed to Change or Delete any Words or Links in the Article or Resource Box. Paragraph breaks must be retained with articles. You can change where the paragraph breaks fall, but you cannot eliminate all paragraph breaks as some have chosen to do. * Email Distribution of this article Must be done through Opt-in Email Only. No Unsolicited Commercial Email. * You Are Allowed to format the layout of the article for proper display of the article in your website or in your ezine, so long as you can maintain the author's interests within the article. * You may not use sentences from this article as an input for any software that steals sentences from others in order to build an article with software. The copyright on this article applies to the "WHOLE" article. *** Author Notification *** We ask that you notify the author of publication of his or her work. Susan Kruger can be reached at: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** Print Publication Reprint Rights *** If you desire to publish this article in a PRINT publication, you must contact the author directly for Print Permission at: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ..................................... If you need help converting this text article for proper hyperlinked placement in your webpage, please use this free tool: http://thephantomwriters.com/link-builder.pl ===================================================================== ABOUT THIS ARTICLE SUBMISSION http://thePhantomWriters.com is a paid article distribution service. thePhantomWriters.com and Article-Distribution.com are owned and operated by Bill Platt of Stillwater, Oklahoma USA. The content of this article is solely the property and opinion of its author, Susan Kruger http://soarstudyskills.com/ --------------------------------------------------------------------- XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX --------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------ *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-* To have your article appear in this distribution list, you must absolutely be a client of thePhantomWriters. We offer a paid article distribution service, and this is one of the more than 60 groups where we submit our client articles. To learn more about our program, visit: http://thePhantomWriters.com/x.pl/tpw/index.htmYahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/thePhantomWriters/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/thePhantomWriters/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
