 I AM A GOOD STUDENT
D Do
Content:
PURPOSE
Knowledge is of no avail. You must put its principles to work. It is what you
do about it -not what you know that counts. No matter how much our culture
values education, no matter how supportive our parents are, no matter how much
instruction is provided for studying skills, you, the student, have to do it.
BACKGROUND
Learning is getting new ways of doing things or satisfying desires. Notice
the doing idea in this definition. We are not considering learning as passing
facts from a book to someone's mind, or from one person to another person. We
are not considering that a person is learning because more facts or information
are being stored away in their mind. A person has learned to the extent that he
can do well and succeed in his life as a whole. No matter how many facts he has,
unless, he can use those facts effectively in getting his work done well, in
living happily, and in getting along well in life generally, he has not learned
anything worthwhile.
To succeed and be motivated, students must feel good about themselves and
develop confidence in their abilities. But to feel good about themselves and
develop confidence they must experience success and be motivated. Success breeds
success. This concept can be expressed graphically:
SUCCESS
POSITIVE FEELINGS
MOTIVATION
EFFORT
Victor Maiorana has offered some excellent suggestions for developing a
self-management program that puts students in charge of their own learning. The
program involves five steps which force students to make decisions and to follow
through on their decisions.
1. PLANNING involves setting goals by deciding in advance what to do and
how long is will take to get that job done.
2. ORGANIZING refers to methods that help students shape their behavior
so that they can achieve their goals. Organizing is essentially controlling the
external forces which distract students and using the environment as a means to
promote achieving their goals.
3. STAFFING is a recognition by the students that they are their own
staff. Only the students can formulate a goal and arrange their behavior to
achieve that goal. Students need to make a personal commitment to what they want
to achieve and to make achieving that goal a priority in their daily lives.
4. DIRECTING is a form of behavior modification used by
students to change their study habits. It refers to the rewards the students
used to reinforce themselves as they make progress toward achieving their study
goals. After studying for a specified period of time, a student might treat
himself or herself to some form of entertainment, a snack or a telephone call to
a friend.
5. EVALUATING provides feedback from the progress being
made toward achieving a study goal. It is a system of record keeping that
provides the students evidence that they are making progress. Daily entries can
record study times to indicate how realistic the initial goal setting was.
Maiorana summarizes his self-management program with the
following eight suggestions to help students develop good study habits.
1. Study at only one place. Use this place only for studying.
2. Establish an initial study schedule that you know you can
maintain. You build from there.
3. Reward yourself.
4. Employ enjoyable and rewarding study systems.
5. Establish reasonable goals for grade achievement.
6. Learn to say no when friends want you to interrupt your
studying.
7. Choose supportive study partners.
8. Use active self-monitoring.
IF WE DID ALL THE THINGS WE WERE CAPABLE OF
DOING WE WOULD TOTALLY ASTOUND OURSELVES.
ACTIVITIES
1. Discuss the success configuration and how it applies to each individual
student.
2. Provide rewards - both internal (feel good) and external (fruit, crackers,
free time) for positive evidence of study skill techniques being used.
3. Discuss Maiorana's suggestions for developing a self-management study
program and how it can be used by the students.
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