Unit 5

Check-in Unit 5 Review Study Like a Pro Time Management Questions Seminar Questions Discuss Unit 6

How are you? How was your week? Any questions with Unit 5? Did you see your grades on

Wednesday? Did everyone see their comments?

Readings Learning Activities Discussion Seminar Mini Project

Read the material. Get to know the chapter titles, the table of contents, and the glossary. This will give you a broad overview of the topic prior to getting down to the specifics.

Find a study space where you will stay

awake and alert. Beds and comfortable chairs invite naps, not learning. Create an inviting place with plenty of light and space to spread out your materials.

Learn the general information before tackling the details.

Use tricks to help you remember. Draw diagrams, create associations, make up rhymes or invent silly sentences to help you remember.

Tape record some of the information and listen to it in your car. Be sure to use an interesting voice. You don’t want to bore yourself!

Stand up once in a while and read a small section of material aloud. Hearing the information as well as seeing it, helps to commit it to memory.

Teach the material to someone else. The dog might be a willing volunteer if no one else can be persuaded to listen.

Design flash cards. Carry them everywhere and use a few spare minutes to test your knowledge.

Briefly review the material about an hour after first learning the information. This helps commit it to long term memory.

Divide large projects into small ones. Memorize just the first part of a diagnosis one day and then add the rest the next day.

Make what you are learning meaningful to you. This knowledge will be useful someday if it is not already!

Divide your studying time into smaller time frames to help the material transfer from short term to long term memory. Frequent short study sessions are much more effective than one long “all nighter”.

Do you find yourself completing tasks at the last minute, or asking for extensions?

Do you set aside time for planning and scheduling?

Do you know how much time you are spending on the various jobs you do?

How often do you find yourself dealing with interruptions?

Do you use goal setting to decide what tasks and activities you should work on?

Do you leave contingency time in your schedule to deal with "the unexpected"?

Do you know whether the tasks you are working on are high, medium, or low value?

When you are given a new assignment, do you analyze it for importance and prioritize it accordingly?

Are you stressed about deadlines and commitments?

Do distractions often keep you from working on critical tasks?

Before you take on a task, do you check that the results will be worth the time put in?

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Analyze Your Use of Time – For an entire week, keep track of how you spent your time (e.g., working on your courses, sleeping, being with family and friends, eating, watching TV, having fun online). Create a sheet that lists every hour of each day of the week. During the day, or at the end of each day, fill in each hour with what you were doing. At the end of the week, tally up the hours you spent on each type of activity. This will help you identify things you could spend less time doing and things you may need to be spending more time doing.

Make a Master Academic Calendar – Mark important deadlines and dues dates for each of your courses on your calendar. Also, mark personal, social, or work events and deadlines. Figure our how much time you will need to meet those deadlines and allow an extra week, if possible, in case something unexpected happens.

Make To-Do Lists - Before you go to sleep, make a list of goals that you want to accomplish for the next day. Make a schedule for how you will accomplish your goals. Also, imagine going through your day step by step. When you get up, you will know exactly what to do and get a lot accomplished, and save a lot of time because of it.

Use a Schedule Book – Don’t rely on your memory to remember what you need to do. Get a schedule book that works for you and keep it with you. No matter what you plan to do (even meals and TV viewing), put it in your book.

Prioritize and Make Trade-Offs - Do you have enough time to accomplish everything on your master calendar or your to-do list? If not, you need to prioritize what is most important and remove things that are less important. Mark each item as high, medium, or low priority in relation to your goals and trade-off lower priority items for higher ones.

Five-Minute Plan – It is often difficult to get started working. The Five-Minute Plan can help you get started. Simply tell yourself that you will work on the task for five minutes. If things are going well after five minutes, continue working. If not, come back to it later.

Break the Task into Smaller Parts - Break large assignments into small ones and do a little bit at a time. For example, break a 10-page paper into a page a day for the next ten days. Break a 60-page reading assignment into 20 pages a day over three days.

Reinforcement - Reward yourself for getting a job done especially if it is something that was difficult.

Know your Attention Span - Some students can concentrate for 3-4 hours without taking a break. Others can only concentrate for 30-50 minutes at a time. Know how long you can concentrate for and study in blocks of time that will maximize your attention.

Know your Good and Bad Times of the Day - "Morning people" work better in the morning. "Night people" work better at night. Know when you are at your best and try to study during those times.

 What distractions/interruptions make study time difficult?

What are some ways to keep distractions to a minimum?

Readings Learning Activities Discussion Seminar Mini Project

Create a Stress Management Plan For this week's mini project, you will use the

template to create a stress management plan for yourself.

Use the templateUse complete sentencesQuestions?

Questions Comments