Study skills help

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Study skills help
By Brendi

I do several things to develop study skills for 5th grade Math. I noticed one day in class that my students never wrote down anything I wrote on the board. When it was time for the test, they'd forget everything. So, I started
putting dates on the board for when I was going to check notebooks for notes. I wouldn't except the notes if they were not all in the same notebook and in order of date. The first check doesn't count (but they did not know this). They get the idea of what you want and do it the next check. I also check homework buy going down rows to see if they have it, they get a + if they have it

and a - if they don't. I usually only check home work 10 times during a 6 week period, each homework - counts ten points off. Late work gets counted with no deductions (but they do not know this). This is good for study habits because they don't like to be the only one in the class that doesn't have their homework. I usually give the class that has ALL their homework a reward. I had great success with this last year. Most of my students had 90's and 100's in homework and it helped their grades greatly. Some teachers do not agree with grading homework only for completion, but I think homework should be for practice purposes only. Yes, you will have trouble with students copying others homework, but you will know who did the work and who did not when you grade the tests.