Secrets of Straight A Students

1. Secrets of Straight A Students They aren’t always more intelligent, but they do work smarter: Here’s how!!

2. Set Priorities • Top students allow no intrusions on study time. • Once the books are open or the computer is booted up, phone calls go unanswered, TV shows unwatched, snacks ignored. • Study time is business: Business comes before recreation.

3. Take Good Notes—And Use Them • Reading the textbooks is important—but the teacher is going to test you on what he/she has emphasized from the book. That is the info. you should find in your notes!! • The top students take notes while reading the text assignments. One student draws a line down the center of a notebook, writes notes from the text on one side and those from the teachers lecture on the other side. • When the bell rings, this straight A student writes 2-3 sentence summary of the lesson’s principal points, which she scans before the next day’s class.

4. Clean Up Your Act—Neatness Counts!! • Neat papers are likely to get higher grades than sloppy ones. • The student who turns in a neat paper is already on the way to an A.

5. Speak Up!! • If I don’t understand the principle my teacher is explaining , I ask him/her to repeat it. Class participation goes beyond merely asking questions, though. It’s a matter of showing intellectual curiosity. • Better grades come from better understanding!

6. Study Together! • Group study sessions have proven to be beneficial for some students in their overall grade. • When studying together students discussed homework problems together, tried different approaches and explained their solutions to one another.

7. Test Yourself At Home • One student, as part of her note-taking method, highlights points she thinks may be covered during exams. Later she frames tentative questions based on those points and gives herself a written examination before test day. • Students who make up possible test questions often find many of the same questions on the real exam, and thus score higher.

8. You Can Be An “A” Student!!

9. Do more than you’re asked • One student says she always does a few more homework problems than she’s asked. It helps her. If the math teacher assigns 5 problems, she does 10. She gets a better understanding that way. • If they are assigned 8 pages to read in history, she reads 12. Part of learning is practicing. The more you practiced the more you learned!!

10. Study Anywhere or Everywhere • Study time is strictly a matter of personal preference. Some of the students worked late at night when the house was quiet. Others awoke early to study. Still others studied as soon as they came home from school when the work was fresh in their minds. • All agreed however on the need for consistency. Whatever you decide follow that schedule everyday.

11. Get Organized! • It Reduces Stress! • It Saves time! • One student maintains 2 folders-one for the days assignments & one of completed and graded papers. • Another student immediately files the day’s papers in color-coded folders by subject so they be available for review at exam time.

12. Read & Learn to Retain the Information! • The best class I ever took, Tom said, was speed reading. I not only increased my words per minute, but I also learned to look at a book’s table of contents, graphs and pictures first. Then I began to read, I had a sense of the material, and I retained a lot more. • Gordan W. Green, Jr’s book, Getting Straight A’s, says the secret of good reading is to be an active reader—one who continually asks questions that lead to a full understanding of the author’s message.

13. Schedule Your Time! • Use a Calendar. • Make time for each subject. • Don’t wait until the last minute: It creates stress. • Research and outline your reports first. • Get it done early so you have time to polish and REVIEW your work.

14. STUDY • Study even when you are not asked!

15. Make this your best semester ever!