5 Study Techniques For High School Kids

Study techniques encompass a series of strategies that secondary school children can apply in their study sessions to improve their performance in the classroom.

Each year, the Ministry of Education and Science conducts independent tests on students to assess their acquired abilities in the areas of reading, mathematics, science, and global and financial competence.

These data are collected in the international PISA report and reflect a stagnation of Spanish students in science and mathematics. Are study techniques failing in high school kids?

It is an exaggeration to attribute school failure to the lack of organization of the students. There are other factors that must be taken into account, such as study habits,  what time they study, in what place, distractions in the study area: parents, music, internet, mobile phone …

Ramón Bedolla, from the Autonomous University of Guerrero, in a study carried out on 67 students urges us to reflect on this question:

Education in the 21st century presents us with new challenges in the face of the new social situation that we are currently experiencing. The irruption of the internet in their daily life and of ICT in the classroom make it necessary for the teaching methodology to adapt to this new situation and offer children a suggestive alternative to claim their attention. But what are study techniques?

What are study techniques applied to high school children?

Study techniques are a series of skills and activities aimed at maximizing the performance of the hours we dedicate to study. They must be acquired through daily practice, so we have to be constant. Its purpose is, therefore, to internalize the knowledge without having to memorize the contents.

These learning aid strategies must follow a logical order that enables us to make the decision of which are the best study techniques for high school children to apply in each study session. Sometimes, school failure is due to a lack of knowledge of these techniques, with which the study is seen as something tedious, boring and mandatory.

Some recommended study techniques

We understand as a study session the time we have planned to dedicate to each subject once the school day is over. As well as the activities that we are going to carry out during the process of acquisition and assimilation of the concepts of the unit in question.

1. The reading.  It is vital to do it to see what content we are going to deal with. We will carry out at least two readings: a quick one that allows us to have a global vision of the subject, that is, a comprehensive reading, and a more leisurely one to detect the key points of the subject.
2. The Underline.  We will highlight those keywords that reflect the main ideas extracted from the second reading of the topic. We must avoid underlining complete sentences, only words, so that with a glance we can identify them. This technique does not replace the summary, but it saves us time if we are a little fair.
   
3. Concept and mind maps.  They help us to synthesize the information from our underline. We organize and interrelate the contents through the elaboration of a data network. Thus, we manage to elaborate a thoughtful and personalized analysis of the contents.
4. Summary tabs.  This strategy is very useful when we have to condense a lot of data on a specific topic. We will have them all synthesized in just half a page and well organized according to their type of information. It is important to number them, and we can use one side of the card to write down questions or doubts.
5. Marginal notes.  It is always important to write down any phrase or example that will help us later in the study, either in class during the explanation or at home in the study session. We can make the annotations both in the margin of the book and in the notes, or on our own cards.

Other Study Skills for High School Kids

There are many other study techniques for high school kids. Here we have suggested those that we have found most relevant and useful, since in some of them you can make use of new technologies for their realization.

Any strategy is valid as long as it helps them to study and motivates them : mnemonic resources, summaries, diagrams, timelines, synoptic tables, comparative tables, silent diagrams …