Divide by Four

In order to manage your tasks and help your task management use divide by four. This simple but helpful strategy will help you take a task and break it apart to more easily get it done. This task will help eliminate procrastination since it will be broken into smaller more manageable pieces.

What you do to dive by four is split the task into (1) prepare (2) start (3) continue (4) finish. This can be used in any class for anything from papers to projects to studying for tests. I used it for my WGS 203 log and my MAT 122 test.

What I did for my WGS log was first I prepared by reading the article and thinking in my mind ideas that could work for this article. Then I started by writing out an outline for myself. Then to continue I wrote a paragraph at a time for each part of my outline which completed my paper and finally to finish I proof read my paper. This got this paper done very quick and helped me avoid a lot of wasted time I might of procrastinated with.

I also used this for studying for MAT 122. The steps I broke my studying into was (1) I set out all my notes and broke the studying down into chapters and topics (2) I read over the textbook chapter by chapter taking a small 5 minute break after each chapter (3) I continued by doing practice problems from each chapter as well taking little breaks after each section (4) Finally I finished studying by taking a practice test and grading myself to make sure I was prepared.

This is a great strategy for Kinesthetic learners like myself because you can write out and visualize what you need to do. This is also good for visual learners. This is a great strategy that

can help anyone out with managing big tasks that they need to accomplish.

Procrastination

Procrastination is a huge problem that most people have. When you are trying to avoid doing something you will procrastinate and do other tasks first to put off the assignment. The strategy I used to help me with my procrastination was time wasters. I chose this skill because I am a Kinesthetic learner and I was able to make a chart and see what I had to do. This can also work for visual learners.

Time wasters is a way to look at what yo

ur time waster is and the task you are avoiding so you can draw conclusions about what things are making you waste your time. You can use this for any assignment in any course.

I used time wasters for my WGS 203 project and studying for my ECN 203 quiz. What I did was make a chart that on the left column said Time Waster and on the right column said Avoided Task(s). I then went through and wrote out all of the time wasters for my WGS project like going on facebook, talking on the phone, and watching TV. In the next column under Avoided Task I listed out reading the WGS article, typing the essay, studying for econ. I then tried to draw conclusions and realized the reason I was not completing my WGS project was because I was not sure what to do and was not fully clear on the directions. For ECN I realized I was not studying because I was anxious about the qui

z and did not know where to start.

This helped me realize why I was procrastinating and made me take the necessary steps to do the work. I isolated myself from the things that were distracting me and got the help necessary to complete these tasks.

Time wasters is a great strategy for everyone who has problems with procrastination because it will help you get your work done!

Motivation!

Academic Fears was a strategy I looked at to help me with motivation. The reason I am either motivated or un-motivated usually comes from fearing the outcome of an assignment. By looking at my academic fears, the outcomes and what I needed to do it helped me get motivated and know what I had to do in order to succeed.

What I did to complete this was look at my math and econ materials. I had test in both of them and needed to get motivated to study for each. I filled out the chart of my academic fears for math which were not understanding the concepts and failing or doing poorly on the exam. The worst outcome for both of these would be getting a bad grade on this test and it hurting my overall grade for the course. The best outcome would be understanding the material to use in the future and doing well on the exam to help my grade and do well. I decided that the action needed to be done was that I would go through all of my lecture notes very carefully, go in for office hours, read the textbook and spend a considerable amount of time doing practice problems. I decided this because all of these things would help me understand the material helping me doing well on the test, accomplishing both of my fears. This got me motivated to start to take these steps on. I day by day did each task by going over each chapter one by one and spending time practicing. I also went into office hours and asked questions and cleared up material I was confused about. This helped me a lot and I went into the test feeling confident.

I also did this for my ECN 203 quiz. My fears for this quiz were similar to my math test. I feared that I would not understand the concepts which were important for not only this test but for the final and doing poorly on this quiz. My worst outcome would be that I did badly on this quiz. The best outcome would be that I understood everything and did well on the quiz. The action that I needed to take in order to accomplish this was to go over the terms day by day and use strategies like LINKS to help me learn these definitions. Once again I was very motivated to get my best outcome possible so I followed the actions I planned out and felt confident going into my quiz at the end of the week.

I think that this is a great strategy for a visual and kinesthetic learner like myself. It lets you write out everything so you have a visual aid to help you know what you need to do in order to do well. This can work in any class with any type of assignment because it helps you get motivated to see what you can really accomplish. I think there are only positives to this strategy and I am going to use it in the future when I need a push to start and do assignments.

Having trouble memorizing hard to learn information? Use acronym sentences!

This easy to use strategy is a great tool to help you in any class that you need to memorize information in.

How you use it:

When you have information that you need to memorize, first list out all of the words you need to memorize (and the order if there is a specific order).

Then highlight the first letter of each word you have.

Next create a sentence to help you recollect the words by using the letters highlighted.

*remember the more unusual the sentence the easier it will be to remember*

How I used it:

I used this strategy in my HTW 318 and WGS 203 classes. For HTW I had to memorize the stages of addiction. I first listed out all of my words: expiriment, misuse, abuse, dependency. I highlighted the first letter of each of the words to help me look at them better. I then thought about a sentence that would help me recall these words in this order during the exam. I cam up with the sentence Everyone Must Always Dance . Now during the exam when a question is asked about the stages of addiction I will have this sentence prepared and be able to recall my words.

I did this as well for my WGS 203 class. The words I were trying to memorize were poverty, population, advances, decline. This time there was no specific order. I again highlighted the first letter and created my sentence. I came up with Dance At Peoples Place. Although this is a weird sentence it will stick with me and help me remember these phrases.

Who this works for:

This is a great strategy for visual and kinesthetic learners. I am a kinesthetic learner so this tool helps me visualize and do something with my material. Making acronym sentence can only help one in memorizing hard to learn information and it is a fun and easy memorization strategy!

READING!!

TART

This week for the reading stratgey I put all of the strategies we have learned together in TART. This is a great strategy
for term heavy classes like my HTW 318 and WGS 203 classes. It's is also great
for kinethetic learners like me because it allows you go get active while taking
and studying your notes. This is also a great strategy for visual learners.

All that you need to do for this is T, go over your terms before class from the
textbook and pull out terms you find important. In both of these two classes I
pulled out the bold words in the chapter for this week and wrote them out. Next
I did A which was simply attending class. In class took careful notes and
highlighted the words I read about before. Next was R which was reading after
class. This is where I used my plug in note strategy and re read my notes while
typing them into the computer. The next step is T which is test and what I did
to review for the tests I had in these classes was make test questions and study
guides. These were great to use because it gave me an idea of questions that
might be on the test.

When studying for a class it is hard to determine which terms are more important than others and sometimes hard to memorize them. TART helps with this because it sets the words aside to start with and then lets you pay attention and listen for them in class. If there was a term that I had not read in the textbook ahead of time, when I heard it in class it would not be of importance to me. With TART I know which terms are highlighted in the textbook as well.

This strategy can really work in any class. In a math class you can do this with
equations or a science or history class with key words.

I think this is a great method to help you take notes and review and study
before tests.

Note Taking Necessities

The Power of Plug-In-Notes

This week we learned the important strategy of note taking skills. Note taking strategies are so important because without good notes you do not have the information needed to do well in the class. Before learning this strategy I took all of my notes by hand and would write everything on the board. After class I would put my notebook away and not look at the class notes until studying for the test.

After reading through all the note taking suggestions I knew that Plug-In-Notes were the perfect thing for me. I am a kinesthetic learner so in class I like to take notes in a notebook so while I write them I learn them, so I decided that after class re-writing them on the Microsoft Word notebook view would be a good way to review and make my notes neater. This tool can also work for visual learners or audio learners because looking at the notes typed out neatly is good for a visual learner or there is a tool to record your professor for the audio learners.

All you do to access the Plug-In-Notes is open up a new Microsoft page and go to the bottom left corner and click on the notebook tab. This will open up a window with a page that looks like a notebook and you can take notes and draw diagrams in different tabs for different classes.

This method does not have any negative aspects because it will help everyone have neater, more organized notes, and for people like me it helps reinforce reviewing the notes after class.

This method can work for any class that you have to take notes in. It works

great for note heavy classes like my HTW 318 and WGS 203 classes. It can also work for History, Math, Science and many more classes.

In WGS and HTW we sit there and copy notes off of the board. Like I said earlier I still continued to write these notes down in my notebook during class but after I sat down and copied them onto the Plug-In-Notes page.

I would recommend this tool to anyone who wants more organized notes and enforcement to review.

The Exclusive on Exam Prep

Exclusive: Anticipating Test Questions

Its that time of the year again, midterms! Half a semesters knowledge crammed into one test. So, how do you go about studying all of it? I know during midterm and final time I am overwhelmed with the amount of material I have to go over and never know where to begin or how to do it. That is why this weeks topic of Anticipating Test Questions for Exam Prep is perfect.

Mat 122 is a course that does not have just one midterm exam but 4 mini midterms. You learn about 2 chapters and get tested on the material. This was the perfect time to test out the exam prep because I had an exam coming up.

The following are ways to anticipate questions your professor might ask you on the exam:

1. Syllabus

2. Professor's questions

3. Study aids

4. Your questions

5. Previous exams

I am a Kinesthetic learner so I thought the professors questions would be a great way for me to visualize and work out the questions. Mat 122 is a class with a lot of notes

so every time the professor asked a question or showed an example I would fully write it down and highlight it as an example so I would make sure to go back to it. When I sat down to study, I wrote out all of the examples on one sheet and made myself a study aid with all of the professors questions and equations for this unit. I then was able to easily go through the examples and memorize the equations. Study aids and professors questions can work in courses like math, history, science, and even for papers to write down key words the professor uses and organize them in your paper outline. Both of these strategies are great for kinesthetic, visual and audio learners.

To make a study aid, which can be a study sheet, graphic organizer, outline, flash cards or any other aid that you think may help you, all you need is your notes from class and place to organize them all. You should go through your notes and write on your study aid the information that is most important or that is hard-to-remember.

There is not a significant amount of limitation to these strategies. In class you should be attentive and focusing on what the professor says anyways so writing down all of the questions they say should not be a burden. Making a study aid will only help you better organize your notes and the material that will be on the test so it is easier to focus on what to study.

This is a method that is great for everyone and could help anyone ace those exams!

Part of My Study Aid

Jill's Ranking Priorities

Have a Problem?

Rank Your Priorities!

Having 15 credits this semester is a lot of work thats usually all due in the same week. Ranking my priorities was the best problem solving strategy I found. I am a visual learner so being able to write out what I have to do is always key for me. With ranking priorities I am able to write it out and then organize it so I know when I have to do each thing because having a long list of things to do gets stressful.

All that one needs to do in order to rank your priorities is list out what you need to do that day and then rank it A-Essential, B-Important, C-Optional and then number them in the order you want to do them within each letter group. Its that simple! It makes a long list of to do more manageable. You can apply this to any school work for any class. For me, I like to break each class up and list what I have to do for that class next to it. If I have more than one task in a class I will separate them so that I can still rank which I should do first. This strategy is good for people who never know where to start. When you have a lot to do it can be stressful and make you not want to start since you do not know where to.

Whenever I get an assignment I will write it into my assignment book. Everything is just listed as to when I have to do it and when it is due. I find it helpful to go home and use the "Stickies" app on my computer to write out the tasks for the day and rank them on there just to make it neater.

This week, I had a paper due in WGS 201 on Wednesday, and ECN 203 quiz Thursday, and some CLS homework throughout the week. On Monday I made my A1 printing my economics notes because that was quick to due and I needed them for the next day. A2 was working on my WGS paper because that was due Wednesday and was a big paper so I needed to get some of it done and I made my CLS homework B1 because it was not due until wednesday so I put it under B because if I did not get to it I could always move it to Tuesday. I followed basically this same strategy for the whole week and used my Fritter Finder to determine when I was going to do each task.

This was a light work week for me so breaking everything up was pretty easy to determine since my paper was the big task and then my other small work came after that. My big tasks like papers and studying for tests will always come first for me because it takes the most amount of time and these assignments are worth the most points.

As soon as I saw the ranking priorities page in the textbook I knew it would work perfect for me and my lists. Since I am a Kinesthetic learner, I like to visualize and do things. Writing everything out and being able to see what I have to do in an order fulfills my learning needs.