STUDY TIPS: Cramming effectively

The best advice for studying is always, "Don't leave it to the last minute!"  But every year, there are a few people who come right up to Districts unprepared, facing an epic cram session before quizzes begin.  If you want to cram effectively, this article may be a big help.

You still have a little more than two weeks before Districts, so if you think you can organize your time to study, do so.  But if not, a little cramming is a whole lot better than nothing.

Study Tips for Concentration

Studying, whether it be for Bible Quizzing or school, is about more than just reading and re-reading. It is also about finding a way to concentrate your attention, and avoid distraction from the outside. Here are some tips on concentration to help focus your mind, and keep it on-task. (Some of these may be familiar from the weekly "study tips" feature during the Quizzing Season. But good advice rarely gets old.)

- Stick to a routine, efficient study schedule
- Study in a quiet environment
- For a study break, do something different from what you've been doing (e.g., walk around if you've been sitting), and in a different area
- Avoid daydreaming by asking yourself questions about the material as you study it

STUDY TIPS: Dartmouth's Best Practices

The ability to study and retain knowledge is not something unique to Bible Quizzing, or even unique to the teen years of life. All of life is a learning process, whether as a student, business-person, parent, or teacher. And to help us keep that learning going, Dartmouth College has put out a series of informative papers on best practices for learning. This is good stuff for Bible Quizzing, for school, or for any time.

Memories fade away rapidly when not reviewed or used. The curve of forgetting is like a playground slide; we forget most immediately after we learn -in the first 24 hours; then it proceeds slowly. Motor learning seems to be better retained than verbal learning because a motor act has to be completely done to be done at all and so requires a higher degree of organization and competency which involves over-learning.

Take a look. You may find information useful as we head towards the end of the school year, too!

Tips for Studying

Bible Quizzing requires students to learn a lot of material, in intense detail. This requires careful preparation, and good study habits. As we head towards the end of the school year, some of these same habits and techniques can be useful for tests and especially Finals.

- Take notes and write down a summary of the important ideas as you read through your study material.

- Take short breaks frequently. Your memory retains the information that you study at the beginning and the end better than what you study in the middle.

- Space out your studying, you'll learn more by studying a little every day instead of waiting to cram at the last minute. By studying every day, the material will stay in your long-term memory but if you try to study at the last moment, the material will only reside in your short-term memory that you'll easily forget.

Do you "exercise" your memory?

One key for being a successful quizzer is figuring out the best way for YOU to study in order to retain. But once you have figured that out, there is still more you can do in order to retain and remember what you have learned. A new study suggests the best thing we can do is to "exercise our memory" by taking a few minutes after studying to consciously try to remember what we just learned. Like a muscle, our brain works best when we exercise those pieces we want to keep strong.

One group engaged in elaborative study using concept maps while a second group practiced retrieval; they read the texts, then put them away and practiced freely recalling concepts from the text.
After an initial study period, both groups recalled about the same amount of information. But when the students returned to the lab a week later to assess their long-term learning, the group that studied by practicing retrieval showed a 50 percent improvement in long-term retention above the group that studied by creating concept maps.