Independent Learning Techniques

You’ve met a new concept in class, you’ve tried some practice questions and may even have felt reasonably confident tackling the homework on it.  Great. And then you move on.

But how well will you understand it later in the year revising for your exams?

By doing your own little trial of different ways to study now, you can develop the crucial self-study skills that will last a lifetime. Not only will this help prevent the inevitable memory fade, but will make this year’s exam revision a breeze.

The secret? Keeping on top of each new topic as soon as you’ve met it, so that you know you know it!

Try out all the ideas listed below, even the ones that don’t appeal to you; you might surprise yourself now you’ve moved into the senior phase and it’s becoming exclusively your responsibility.

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Learning Techniques to Try at Home

The bad news is simply reading over your class notes and nothing more just doesn’t cut it – your short-term memory will ditch that info at the first opportunity. Likewise with adding highlights to your notes; it's not actually going in, the best you can hope for two weeks later is that you’re going to remember which colour you used!

The good news is I have the solution and techniques to help you. It’s all about ACTIVE LEARNING. This is where you have to produce your own notes and question and challenge yourself, to force your brain into thinking things through and participating in the learning process.

Here are some active learning techniques to try to find what works for you.

Note-taking: re-write your class notes (without looking at them!) in your own words.  Then compare with your originals for missing information etc. Next, write a summary of your notes, again without looking at what you did previously before checking back.  Finally, write a flashcard with the important details only.  Label the back of the flashcard, it’ll be handy later.  The act of thinking about what you’re writing will be what sets it into your brain!

Leitner System:  based on flashcards; all the cards start in Box 1.  The idea is if you get a card right, move it on to the next box, if you get it wrong, move it back one (or stay in Box 1).  Then for each set of cards:

           Daily – Box 1

           Every 2 days – Box 2

           Every 4 days – Box 3

           Every 9 days – Box 4

           Every 14 days – Box 5

Mnemonics: not easy with advanced maths! But for some, a story around remembering a formula may help:

e.g. gradient = (y₂ – y₁) / (x₂ – x₁) could be, ‘y do I start with 2 y and subtract 1 of the y’s before going downstairs only to find there’s 2 x’s before I can lose 1 x?

Colour Coding:  colour can improve a person’s memory performance, especially the warm colours, red and yellow.  Try writing key points in red and highlight the important stuff in yellow.  Careful though – don’t drown your notes in a kaleidoscope of colours, just target the key information!  Use colour to sort and categorise your notes into topics.

Mind Maps:  love them or hate them they’re commonly seen for whole course or whole topic summaries.  Try seeing if you can create one for a small part of a topic (today’s lesson?).  The structure is related to how our brains store and retrieve information, so can be a powerful tool.  For Maths-type logic though, many of us may prefer to write something closer to a Flow Chart.  Either way, no matter how resistant, give it a go!

Glossary: make your own that makes sense to you.  It could be a list, or techniques like, ‘when differentiating, remember to …’, or a list of all the formula you come across (with hints and tips around them), or key / trigger words in exam questions.

Teach Someone:  the secret to understanding something well is to explain it simply. Use diagrams, notes, mind maps or whatever to help you build a picture of how you are going to explain the concept to a willing, possibly non-mathematical, study partner.

Practice by Doing: there’s no getting away from it, maths techniques are learned by doing.  But add in a twist, challenge yourself by marking your workings as though you are the Examiner – it gives you so much insight into what needs to be given in an answer.  Or, with a study partner, both do a question and mark each other.  You can get a supply of questions from buying a textbook for your course that’s not used in your school.  Our App also has a Resources section that takes you to a whole range of questions already reviewed as exactly the right standard.

Reflective Learner: becoming one will stand you in good stead for the future.  Try to get in the habit of analysing how effective your learning is for you at that time.  What felt good about it?  What left you feeling slightly frustrated or as though something is missing?  If a technique is not going so well for you, you still have time to try an alternative.

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