Notetaking, test-taking and reading skills can help you raise your history grade.
While the ability to earn A's comes naturally to some students, others need to put in a significant amount of time and effort to earn good grades. Fortunately, with careful notes, solid test-taking strategies, active listening skills and purposeful textbook reading, you can bring up your world history grade. Furthermore, the skills necessary to earn an A are similar across classes, so if you are able to earn an A in your world history course, you should be able to earn A's in other courses you find difficult as well.
Instructions
1. Review your performance to see where you need help. If you know the material but fall apart during tests, focus on study skills and test-taking strategies. If you forget to do homework or find you haven't done it correctly, organization and attentiveness may be your problems. If you find you simply don't understand the material at all, you may need to work on your reading strategies and ask more questions in class.
2. Come to class ready to listen and learn. Do any assigned reading before class and review your notes from the previous lesson. Pay close attention to the lesson. Ask the teacher questions if you're confused; if you don't ask questions, your teacher will assume you're doing fine.
3. Take notes. Write down what your teacher writes on the board. If your teacher repeats a fact, opens a sentence with a phrase like "Be sure to remember . . ." or describes a historical fact as "important," "crucial" or "significant," write it down. Abbreviate your notes in a way that makes sense to you so you can write as quickly as your teacher talks. It doesn't matter if no one else knows that "N" stands for "Napoleon" as long as you do!
4. Read your homework questions before doing your actual textbook reading. Teachers don't assign homework questions because they want to make you do extra work; they assign them because the answers to those questions are the most important pieces of information in the reading. Reading the questions first will help you to focus on important information and avoid getting bogged down in minor details.
5. Put your homework in the same section of your notebook as soon as you've finished it. This will help you remember to bring it to school and will also help you find it when your teacher collects it. If your school posts homework assignments on a website, write down the homework before leaving class anyway. Even if your Internet connection or electricity is out when you get home or if your teacher has an emergency after school and can't post the homework, you're still responsible for completing it.
6. Keep all of your worksheets and handouts, especially if you haven't yet taken the test on the unit that those worksheets and handouts cover. They'll have important information you'll need when you study for the test. Once the unit is over, ask your teacher what you'll need to keep for the midterm and final exam.
7. Look carefully at the rubrics when your teacher assigns projects, if he gives our rubrics. Rubrics tell you exactly what your teacher is looking for on the project and how much each part is worth. If one aspect of your project is worth 25 points and another is only worth five, for example, give more attention to the part that's worth 25 points. If your teacher doesn't give rubrics, ask him how he will grade the project.
8. Review your notes periodically in the days leading up to the test instead of cramming. Study with friends who usually get A's in the class to see how their strategies differ from yours. Review all the information on the study guide. If there is no study guide, ask your teacher what will and will not be on the test.
9. Answer easy questions before hard questions when taking a test. Use the process of elimination on multiple choice questions. When answering an essay question, make sure to answer all parts of the question and to use at least half the space the teacher gives you. Never leave anything blank -- if you don't answer, you'll definitely get a zero on the question, whereas a guess has a chance of earning you a point.
10. Read historical fiction or watch movies set in the time period you're currently studying. Although they won't necessarily be historically accurate, they may make some of the people, places and events more real for you. If something in the book or movie is different from what you learned in class, ask the teacher whether it really happened or research it on your own.
Tags: your teacher, your notes, able earn, history grade, homework questions
