Fast track your results, develop positive learning behaviour, establish purpose and design goals that motivate, with "study skills"!

What is the most important skill? I'll give you a clue - you're doing it right now. It's not reading, although reading is an extremely important pathway of learning.

It's "thinking". The most important skill involves learning how to use our internal software and hardware. The hardware being the brain and the software being thinking patterns or "thoughts".

This article is to introduce you to the study skills guide and how "thinking" is the real reason for it's creation, which took about 6 months and two revised editions, and sums up some of the most important "ACTION" and "LEARN to THINK" activities I've come across in my 20 years of classroom teaching.

So what are the benefits of using the guide?

1. The guide is a personal learning resource and reference for the learner, presenting easy to use strategies.

2. The guide targets important skills and in particular "attitude".

3. "Study Skills," is a way to promote proactive learning.

4. This resource is a personal development course to work through at the individual's pace.

5. The guide presents those essential transferable skills needed to acquire understandings and knowledge.

6. The guide provides the perfect transition course for the learner - before and during college.

Hi, Joseph Sgro here. I'm the author of The study skills guide - created with the student's success in mind. In this article I do a bit of teacher talk, but in essence I'm here to encourage parents who sometimes struggle with their teenagers.

Unfortunately, I can't solve all the problems that come up, but I'm very familiar with the problems students have in class and in 1994, I had a deep desire to try and alleviate some of the pain. Since then all my privately tutored students have used my study skills program and most have succeeded at school.

The study guide has been used successfully with all ages and I believe it will work really well with your high school student.

Good Results with Adults I find that adults who want to return to education courses profit from the exercises. It gradually brings them up to speed.

Here are some of the different people who have used the guide: I've used it with one adult who was a remedial masseuse, another who was a personal trainer, who was off to the U.S.S.R. to teach English as a second language and a sixty year old lady who was studying history at university. These people have all achieved and managed to pass their courses.

What the Teacher Expects In class students are expected to "understand the question", "know how to research", "collect information", "sift through the data" and come up with a "logical way of presenting the information".

Those requirements presume that students already have those skills and are motivated. Do your children demonstrate a lack of goals and purpose? How is their life at school? Does student behaviour produce a poor class environment and sloppy results?

Would you like your children to be more motivated to succeed and would you be eager to see them develop a new sense of purpose, with goals that will promote learning, more enthusiasm and acceptable class behaviour?

The success of our children is VERY important - isn't it? I would do anything to make sure my two boys, Frank and Michael, have a GREAT educational adventure. It is possible, but parents have to help their students create the "right" learning environment.

Your children can be encouraged and guided in class to establish more powerful goals to create "purpose" in what they do - aren't powerful goals what work best for adults?

They need to be shown how to find the resources, how to decide which information is relevant, how to make notes and how to organize and present that information. The guide focuses firstly on developing the right attitude and sense of purpose. Spending time on these essential aspects will virtually guarantee better results from your students.

What Happens in School? What really happens? Most of the time is spent on disruptive students and not on developing skills and learning content.

What can we do? How many students today walk into class feeling apprehensive and wonder whether this will be just another opportunity to fail? They do not see that there is anything to learn from failure other than that they are not worthy of success.

How do we help them through a difficult growing period in their lives? How do we turn our words into actions?

This is why the study skills guide was developed. It was a way of offering a friendly hand and guidance, while students tackle those dreaded assignments and devour the endless content.

Each page attempts to make a contribution by providing exercises to reinforce and explain essential skills and understandings. Some points merely need revising to refresh what we already know, while other sections set the scene for important learning.

Fine tuning our approach to learning... The skills section is the last section in the guide because the text is more than just exercises - it is a short personal development course.

The most important section is the first section which covers "attitude" and how this will influence the results we want. Without some attention to the student as a person, with feelings and a personal agenda, we may gloss over what education is really about.

Of the five sections, attitude is the most important element in life, because it is our personal response to life that really matters and is the making of our success or failure.

You may notice something special in the title: "Study Skills - for students who will only settle for success". The title is an expression of our journey and how we must "expect" and "work towards our own success". It would be great if we were just handed our success and told we could go and enjoy it - unfortunately it will never happen!

Students look for guidance and because they want our attention, parent's time is stretched to the limit - especially when you are a single parent.

The study skills guide will not solve all educational problems. Its major benefit is that it becomes a useful resource for any student to discover ways of learning essential skills and thus improving their learning.

It provides examples of how to improve the effectiveness of learning strategies and it will be available when you are not around to answer the question of "how?" or "what?" do I do.

Even though the guide is written for the student audience, I would not assume that "the teacher" has become obsolete. With a little direction students will realize that they now have a resource to help them plan and to improve the effectiveness of what they do.

MAJOR BENEFITS OF USING "STUDY SKILLS"

So what are the benefits of using the guide? I see the following benefits:

1. The guide is a personal learning resource and reference for the learner, presenting easy to use strategies.

2. Our guide targets important skills.

3. "Study Skills," is a way to promote proactive learning.

4. This resource is a personal development course to work through at the individual's pace.

5. It provides a method of correcting the balance between the need for content and acquiring the essential skills.

6. The guide provides the perfect transition course for 13 year old students.

I am confident that you will find these benefits attractive and begin to understand my enthusiasm and desire to bring this valuable resource to your attention.

One major benefit is that the guide is easy to read, as well as helpful. The section on goals is an opportunity for students to create the internal motivation and drive, giving "purpose" to what they do in class.

As adults we need goals to motivate us and give purpose to what we do. We mustn't forget how important this requirement of purpose is to the student.

MAJOR BENEFITS FOR TEACHERS

What will the guide do for teachers? The benefits are as follows:

1. Teachers have a handy resource for when there is a problem with developing essential skills.

2. The study guide is a reminder not to assume students have the required skills, and it answers questions such as, what do I need to teach?

3. Teachers do not need to generate the lessons.

4. A way of developing skills which are transferable across the curriculum and a helpful transition programme.

5. A way to improve communication between teachers and students. Most topics lend themselves to encourage discussion.

6. A way to promote the development of important life skills such as: writing; reading; speaking and organizational management.

In the final analysis the usefulness of anything depends on the user and what they do with what they have.

MAJOR BENEFITS FOR THE SCHOOL

The school would benefit in the following ways:

1. By incorporating study skills in the school curriculum, the school can build a better learning environment and encourage teachers to work more eagerly on future school programmes.

2. The school has a new way of providing on-going pastoral care by providing a valuable resource for students.

3. The school has a new way of promoting skill development and in particular life skills.

4. The school has a valuable resource especially for new teachers and another way of turning school policy into action.

5. The school has another visual expression of a programme which can be shared with the community to demonstrate the focus on personal development of its students and a helpful transition course for high school and college students.

I understand how important time is to you and I thank you for your time. I sincerely believe that the guide, "Study Skills - for students who will settle only for success", provides an opportunity to achieve many educational objectives.

I will include a Special Bonus for anyone who purchases the guide - "online support". I know what it's like to be a parent and I want to do the best I can to make this program successful.

When you purchase the manual I will include "my personal online support".

Just mail me and I will answer your questions and help you where I can. I've never offered this before, but we are in a NEW age and I understand the demand on your time.