ETIWANDA SCHOOL DISTRICT SPECIAL EDUCATION

* Digest: You can also mark concepts or ideas that you did not understand and look it up further or ask for a second opinion from a classmate or the professor.

* Expand:

Try to see the connection between the material you are currently studying and your previous lessons; or try to see the relevance of your text in your life.

* Review:

Review the materials you have studied; ideally, you should be reviewing the highlighted texts and the notes you have made instead of reading everything again.

Whether you have a big exam or you just want to maintain a respectable GPA, always keep MURDER at the back of your mind: MURDER, the only crime that pays.

• Chester Bennington is wailing, “The sun goes down, I feel the light betray me” on your radio; the cold beads of sweat that form on your forehead agree with Bennington– for the nth time you have a long exam tomorrow morning and you are nowhere near prepared. You call on every divinity, pray to every God, to be miraculously given effective study skills; however, you will settle for time to stop so you can cram longer.
• Hypothetically, if time did stop, how can you make up for lost time and acquire effective study skills? How about through M.U.R.D.E.R.:
• * Mood: Think of studying as a date that you would like to impress and go out of your way. Create the right ambience. Pick a place that can help you concentrate, most people need a place where there is silence but there are a handful of people that need noise to concentrate. Play some music to sustain your mood.

* Understand:

• Get yourself a marker and mark areas of your text that strikes you as important; or make an outline of the material.
• * Recall:

Stop every once in a while to paraphrase what you have read in your own words; if you can express the idea in your own words, it means you have understood what you were studying and have also memorized it.