Study Skills

Marion is a second grade student at a public school in Muscogee County, Georgia. Marion is very good at math – she is at the top of her class and is performing at a third grade level. Marion struggles with reading vocabulary, letter-word recognition, sound awareness, picture vocabulary and phonics. Marion also gets very off task when she is not engaged in an assignment; she becomes disengaged because she struggles to sift through directions and other blocks of text. Marion’s tendency to get off task appears to be rooted in her poor reading skills; struggling to read makes Marion less committed to the task at hand. Additionally, Marion has relatively poor expression skills. She has only recently begun telling and retelling stories in chronological order and often gets distracted when communicating a story or event. Improving Marion’s reading and language skills is the first priority, however, Marion is quite forgetful of her glasses, schools supplies, homework, etc. Her lack of organization is also important to address.

Marion needs multiple levels of support. Getting her onto a regular schedule, both in the classroom and at home, will enable her to focus on single priorities at one time; she will not be sitting at home with her homework, become frustrated by the directions and turn to the television or to her Nintendo DS. A schedule will help Marion understand the concept of having specific windows of time for various commitments and activities. In order to create a realistic and functional weekly schedule and to-do list, Marion’s classroom teacher, mother and father will need to communicate their individual interests in Marion’s schedule. Marion, too, will need to provide feedback. The schedule should travel in Marion’s binder, so that it moves between school and home. Marion can reference the schedule any time she is unsure as to what comes next in her day, or what she is committed to doing for the week. Additionally, Marion’s parents should post the schedule in the home, so that they can also reference the schedule. It is important that Marion’s parents and teacher adhere to the schedule as much as possible; deviating from the schedule undermines its importance.

A schedule will allow Marion’s parents and teacher to build academic time into her day beyond school. Marion’s reading skills are low, and her classroom teacher has asked her mother to read a book with Marion each night before bed. This can and should be built into Marion’s daily schedule. Additionally, Marion attends tutoring sessions for two hours a day, two days a week; these sessions focus on phonics and reading comprehension skills and should be noted in Marion’s schedule. Additional blocks of time, perhaps 30 minutes a day, should be devoted to reinforcing these skills in the home.

Marion’s regular schedule will help her anticipate class schedules and family commitments each week, in addition to homework that needs to be completed and turned in to her teacher. A schedule will also provide support for Marion’s memory; she can reference the schedule at any time, as it will be with her at school and posted at home. Teaching Marion memory tricks will further boost her retention. The Memory Furst books provide memory strategies for remembering everything from grocery lists to to-do lists to lists of academic information. These strategies will provide even more support for Marion’s memory. The FIRST strategy (Nagel et al., 1994) will be beneficial to Marion. The FIRST strategy encourages students to take the first letter of each item, activity or bit of information to be remembered and build an acronym that will job the student’s memory and enable her to retrieve the desired information. Marion is already beginning to implement this strategy, but teaching her to use it for more than academic tasks will build her foundation of problem-solving skills and help her to be a better student and more successful child. Visualization and key word methods will also benefit Marion. Visualization is already being utilized to help Marion complete tasks; she is already being instructed in picturing a specific book on her desk at home to help her remember what homework assignment she must complete. Further employing visualization strategies will also build Marion’s stock of tools to help her remember specific tasks and activities.

Marion’s expression skills will improve as her reading and language skills improve. These are being supported at school, in tutoring sessions and at home, but the lack of structure in Marion’s day partially accounts for her lack of retention of skills learned. A carefully made schedule will allow Marion to continue to improve her reading skills while also addressing her tendency toward being disorganized. If Marion commits to her schedule, and to checking it and using it as a tool, she will improve upon her self-monitoring skills. Marion is a second grader, but learning to rely on scheduling mechanisms now will serve her well as her education progresses. Learning to rely on and utilize memory strategies will also be beneficial to Marion in this stage of her education, as building a foundation for problem-solving skills in the second grade will only strengthen Marion’s ability to self-navigate both academic and personal dilemmas as she ages.

References

Vaughn, S. & Bos, C. S. (2009). Strategies for Teaching Students with Learning and Behavior Problems (7^th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

Nagel, et al. (1994). The FIRST-letter mnemonic strategy (rev. ed.). Lawrence, KS: Edge Enterprises.