Study Strategies for School Survival

I am a 6th grade social studies teacher at a middle school located in Boston. As is the case with many urban schools, my school is under-resourced and under-funded. In addition, close to 90% of my students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. Sometimes my students have difficulty getting the materials necessary for fully participating in class, and my school does not provide the materials, either. In these situations, I often end up purchasing supplies for them - an undertaking which is both costly, and unsustainable.

One of my most important jobs as a teacher is equipping my students with skills and strategies that they can continue to use long after they leave my classroom. This is particularly important around the issue of studying. While many teachers provide their students with photocopied handouts or study guides to prepare for exams, I think that it is crucial for students to know how to study their textbooks, notes, and materials from class in order to prepare for tests. This is especially important in history class, where state and district exams are very focused on a "names, dates, people, and places" version of history, and memorization is vital to success on those exams. We expend a lot of effort and energy in my class learning how to take good notes, how to highlight key information in our notes, how to create flashcards, and how to study those flashcards. By learning to use these strategies effectively, my students have become much more independent in their studying, and have acquired study strategies that can be applied across subject areas, and throughout their K-12 and college educations. However, teaching and using these strategies requires many materials that are not provided by my school.

In order to support my students in building a set of study strategies, and foster their independence as learners, I need to have ready access to the materials that we use to help us study. We use highlighters regularly to pull out key vocabulary and ideas from the notes that we take as we read the history textbook, and engage in historical simulations. We use index cards and markers to create flashcards for vocabulary, key events, and important historical figures. Students then use those flashcards to quiz each other, identify the information they know and don't know, and target their studying efforts towards the less-familiar concepts. All of this work requires lots of materials--highlighters, markers, index cards, and plastic bags for storing the flashcards they create. However, this work also yields many benefits. It is incredible to walk into my room on a day when students are preparing for an exam, and see them quizzing each other using their flashcards, holding each other accountable for historical knowledge, and challenging each other to study harder, and learn more, in order to be prepared for exams. It is more powerful, and empowering, than a teacher-made study guide ever could be.

Your donation will ensure that my students have the materials needed to develop the study skills and strategies they need to be successful in my history class. However, your donation will also support my students' growth as independent learners, which is an outcome that will stay with them throughout their school careers.