Discussing the Secrets of Straight-A Students

James McGuire

March 16, 2003

English 322, Section #567

Discussing the Secrets of Straight-A Students

The 11 steps to, “Secrets of Straight-A Students are:

1. Set priorities. Students brook no intrusions on study time which is business that comes before recreation.

2. Study anywhere -- or everywhere. Students get persuaded by a tutor to use the time to memorize biology terms. An another posted a vocabulary list by the medicine cabinet and learned a new word every day while brushing his teeth. Some worked late at night when the house was quiet, wake up early in the morning, study as soon as they came home from school when the work was fresh in their minds.

3. Get organized. Keep a pencil, paper, pens right where you can put your hands on to it so you don’t waste time looking for them. Use folders to track your assignments and another for papers that are completed and graded. File day’s papers in color-coded folders by subject so, they’ll be available for review at exam time. Students who don’t have a private study area remain organized. Use a backpack or drawer to keep essential supplies together and cuts down on wasting your time searching for them.

4. Learn how to read. Take speed reading classes it will also learn you how to look at the book’s table of contents, graphs and pictures. You can retain a lot more information when you begin to read. “Be an active reader -- one who continually asks questions that lead to a full understanding of the author’s message” - Gordon W. Green, Jr., in his book, “Getting Straight A’s”

5. Schedule your time. When a teacher assigns a long paper, draw up a timetable, dividing the project into small pieces so it isn’t so overwhelming. “It’s like eating a steak, you chew it one bite at a time” - Domenica Roman. Research and Outline a report first, then try to complete the writing in one long push over a weekend. “I like to get it down on paper early, so I have to polish and review”- Melendres. Even the best students procrastinate. But when it happens, they face up to it. It comes down to late nights to homework. “You make sure to hit the deadline if you want straight A‘s.” -Christi Anderson.

6. Take good notes -- and use them. Reading the textbook is important but, the teacher is going to test you on what he or she emphasized. It is what you find in your notes. Top students also take notes while reading the text assignment. Use this homemade system David Cieri has used which he draws a line down the center of a notebook. Then, writes notes from the text on one side and those from the teacher’s lecture on the other. He is able to review both aspects of the assignments at once. Before the bell rings, students want to leave early out of class but, Anderson uses a few minutes to write a two or three sentence summary of the lesson’s principal points, which she scans before the next day’s class.

7. Clean up your act. Neat papers are likely to get higher grades than sloppy ones. The student who turns in a neat paper is already on the way to an A.

8. Speak up. Class participation goes beyond merely asking questions. It is a matter of showing intellectual curiosity. Better grades come from better understanding.

9. Study together. The value of hitting the books together was demonstrated in an experiment at University of California at Berkeley. Uri Treisman, a graduate student there observed a freshman calculus class which Asian-Americans scored higher than other minority students from similar academic backgrounds. These students discussed homework problems together, tried different approaches and explained their solutions to one another. The other students, studied alone, spent most of their time reading and rereading the text, and tried the same approach time after time even if it was unsuccessful. Treisman suggest teaching group-study methods in the course. The groups performed equally well.

10. Test yourself. As part of note-taking, Domenica highlights points she thinks may be covered during exams. Later she frames tentative test questions based on those points and gives herself a written examination before test day. “If I can’t answer the question satisfactorily, I go back and review,” she says. Students who make up possible test questions often find many of the same questions on the real exam and thus score higher.

11. Do more than you’re asked. If your math teacher assigns five problems, do ten. Read more than eight pages, do 12. Part of learning is practicing and the more you practice, the more you learn. From infancy, the parents imbued them with a love for learning. They set high standards for their kids and held them to those standards. They encouraged their sons and daughters in their studies but, did not do the work for them. The parents impressed the lessons of responsibility on their kids and the kids done very well on school work.