The Nontrad News - Issue #4

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The Nontrad News is back! Thanks so much to my readers for being patient. You are the best readers anywhere.

Hi again from Kentucky.

It is Garden Time for me. I have also been very busy withthe new Nontrad Facebook group and also helping students at the Nontrad Yahoo Group.Also, I have been visiting my mother, who is in a Care Home in Nashville.

I give a big virtual hug to all the nontraditional students who are juggling their lives and their school. Also a big hello I have noticed that many nontraditional students are winding up their semesters. Many are signing up for Summer School and are excited about next year too.

To those graduating this year, CONGRATULATIONS! I wish you the very best. And to current Summer Session students, and those going to school next Fall, I hope your summer is full of happiness and joy.

STUDY SKILLS for nontraditional students.

This is the time for papers, winding up research, and getting ready for or taking exams and tests. If you are well-organized, you will be working with deadlines and self-made mini-deadlines for your work.

You can learn good study skills. Breaking assignments into smaller, more manageable sections, helps me. Keeping each subject separate and well-organized into notes, assignment pages, etc. also can be a great help.

STUDYING FOR TESTS

Here are a couple of things that can help you a LOT when studying for tests.

1) Try a study group. Ask 1-4 others to get together with you. You can all quiz each other with questions and concepts that you and the others think will be on the tests. You can often get at least a grade better on each test this way.

2) Get plenty of rest - especially before a test. It can be tempting to study all night before a test. But often you will do better studying much earlier, doing a review, and being fresh and bright-eyed before the test.

3) Use time-honored helps, such as going on when you do not know an answer, and finishing the answer after you are done with other, easier answers, and using pneumonics to help you remember important concepts. (Remember Every Good Boy Does Fine in music?

Remembering the notes E-G-B-D-F - can be easier using a memory technique which makes a sentence out of the first letters of each note. This also works with other things you need to remember for tests. Similarly, you can remember concepts or words using poetry, objects in an imaginary room, or made-up words containing clues to words you need to know.

Would you like some great sites to help you study? Here are some of the very best:

The Nontrad website Study Skills Page - this page talks about study skills and why they are important. There are some good links here too.

Study Guides and Strategies - this page, done as a public service by Landsberger, is a real treasure page. He has many categories of help available here for nontraditional students, including how to construct tests (for teacher education students) to Writing, Public Speaking, Time Management, Subjects (Math, Science and Technology, and English), and a lot more.

And learn more here about study skills, mnemotics, and test taking by going to these sites:

Memorize with Mnemotics by Gregory Lloyd

Test Taking Strategies from other students

Test Taking Central - good tips here too