Tips to set up a study schedule for finals week
It’s that time of year again! You know, that sweet spot between Thanksgiving and Winter break where you eat all of the baked goods and do your holiday shopping while drinking eggnog latte’s?! The best time of the year, spending quality time with family.
If this sounds like a dream, then you’ve got a high schooler at home who is stressed about finals that happen during this time of the year. Ah yes, the time of year where procrastination is at its highest peak. The time of year that students are most stressed about their grades! The time of year that you wish would never happen.
The only… Well, one of the main problems here is that teenage students usually don’t listen to their teachers or parents about setting up a study schedule. Both adults will coach the students into setting up a study schedule and help kiddos manage their time to spend additional time studying for their biggest and hardest final. But kiddos this age have it all figured out. (If you can’t see the eye roll I’m giving you, it’s because you’re not reading carefully.)
As much as I’ve preached to students about setting up a plan, it wasn’t until I started running sessions as review sessions that kiddos finally started to understand what preparing for a final is all about. Usually I have students ask me all of their questions during our sessions and then I provide additional problems on the SAME topic. However, now I’ve changed my ways and I’ve decided to simply start sessions with review questions!
Of course as with any new form of instruction there is definitely push back from the students. But let’s be honest, who’s the one with years of experience?! And who’s the one who is seeing the patterns?! And who’s the one who has done finals review time and time again?!
That’s right – It’s me! Hi! I’m the solution!
I know that kiddos need to be shown what to do and how to study. They don’t know yet. So I sit with them and make a plan. Then I implement it with them. I give them specific time slots to study for their math finals and I have them complete specific problem sets in between sessions. Yes I know in a time when there’s already so much to do I have students work on previous concepts. But guess what?! That’s called spiraling and when I started doing this in my classroom students were able to retain more information during the year. (I have a whole blog post about this, check it out here.)
Here are some tips on what you can do with your kiddo this fabulous finals season:
First, look at their syllabus and determine if the final is a big chunk of the grade or does it weigh the same amount as a regular test? This is important because if you’ve got a final that’s worth 50% of the grade and a final that just gets lumped into a quizzes and tests grade, you’d likely want to spend more time and energy focused on the final that’s worth more.
Second, now that you know what you’d like to spend more time on, look at your calendar. What time are you available? Are you taking any extracurriculars that take up time after school? Is your homework taking you a long time to complete on a daily basis? Are your weekends all booked up? Or are you completely free after school? Print out a calendar and physically put blocks of time on the calendar for when you have class, extracurriculars, dinner, shower, AND studying for finals.
In the last few years I’ve started time blocking and it’s helped me become much more productive during the day. I strongly recommend looking into time blocking and using this method to help get your finals schedule set up.
Third, we need to know what is on your final and how the material will be tested? Does the final cover all of the material from the year? Will the final hold more of the current concepts or will it be a mix of everything? These are questions that may be answered in a syllabus, or even just try talking to the teacher.
Advice on how to ask your teacher what’s on the final: Do not just ask your teacher, “hey, what’s on the final?!” Instead ask direct questions like, “will the final cover all of the chapters or just the chapters from the midterm?” Or you can ask, “will the final be a mix of multiple choice and short answer questions, or only short answer questions?” These direct questions are much better received by a teacher than the typical, “is this on the test?”
Now that you know how much the final is worth, when you have time to study, and what will be on the final and how it will be assessed, you can begin to fill your calendar by time blocking the proper amounts for each subject. (Of course as a math teacher I’m going to suggest you spend the most time on math…)