Study habits
S.S.M.R: Reinforce

This is the final part of SSMR which is designed to help you turn your study habits into a top grade getting way of life.  R stands for reinforce.  If you haven't read the other parts of this course then why not have a read of them by following this study habits link.

To be successful with your studying you need to go back over the material you’ve learned.  I’m sure you’ll know from experience that memory gets worse over time regardless of your studying habits.  You can remember something you’ve learned pretty well the next day, perhaps even the next but by the end of the week it’ll be fading a bit.

Even when you relearn something again after a week it will still start to fade over time.  If you try to recall it after a month, things will be hazy.  However all isn’t lost!  You can set up a system as part of your studying habits that will allow you to remember.

You need to think of reinforcement in three stages.

• 1 week reinforcement

• 1 month reinforcement

• 3 month reinforcement

At each of the stages you need to make a positive effort to remember a topic.  So if you have studied maths at the start of week 0 then you need to restudy it at the start of week 1.  You then need to study it again at the start of month 2 and at the start of month 4.  This repeating cycle needs to become an integral part of your studying habits

Setting Things Up

With SSMR you should find this pretty easy to set up.  From the measurement part you should have developed a table that sets out your topic study plan.

Week	Topic part	Hours scheduled	Hours completed	Memory sheet available	First Memory sheet test date/result	Second Memory sheet test date/result
1	Differentiation basics	1 hour
1	Derivatives	2 hours
1	Continuity	1 hour
1	Higher level derivatives	1 hour
2	Notation	1 hour
2	Proofs	3 hours
2	Newton	1 hour

This table gives you a topic by topic plan for each of the areas that you are going to study.  You’ve also included the memory sheets in this and allowed for two memory sheet tests.  You now need to upgrade this table to allow for reinforcement:

Week	Topic part	Hours scheduled	Hours completed	Memory sheet available	Week 1 test date/result	Month 1 test date/result	Month 3 test date/result
1	Differentiation basics	1 hour
1	Derivatives	2 hours
1	Continuity	1 hour
1	Higher level derivatives	1 hour
2	Notation	1 hour
2	Proofs	3 hours
2	Newton	1 hour

In the table I’ve adjusted the headings for the memory sheets.  I’ve specifically stated the 1 week, 1 month, 3 month tests.  These are reinforcement tests.

You should add into the topic sheet the date when each test is due.  This is a pretty easy calculation.

When working out your schedule you might find some issues towards the end of it.  Often you will find that the exams clash with the month 3 review.  Don’t worry about this, simply schedule in an earlier review.  You now have great studying habits so it shouldn’t be a problem for you in remembering topic information.

Testing

Testing should be one of your study habits. The test itself is self administered.  You simply take your memory sheet, which lists the key parts of the topic, and check that you can reproduce it perfectly.

Once you’ve tried to reproduce the sheet judge how much of it you got right and give yourself a percentage mark.

I’ve found that when I do this normally my first week is okay but my Month 1 test is terrible.  Often I’ll find that I need to spend a fair bit of time redoing the learning.  However I never get fed up with this.  It always reminds me of the value of reinforcement.

As you progress through your study schedule and reinforcement schedule you should find that you’re becoming more confident in the subjects.  Your study habits are becoming powerful in their effect.  You’re following a method of learn, test, reinforce.  This cycle when repeated ensures that you have great recall of your topic areas.

To complete your reinforce part of the cycle you should also prepare some visual reinforcement for yourself.  This means building some graphs that show how you are progressing through your studies and that you are building great study habits.

It’s pretty simple to produce a reinforcement graph like this.  Simply draw up a table like this:

Week	Topic part	Hours completed	Memory sheet available	Week 1 test date/result	Month 1 test date/result	Month 3 test date/result
1	Differentiation basics
1	Derivatives
1	Continuity
1	Higher level derivatives
2	Notation
2	Proofs
2	Newton

You can see that I’ve simply reused the previous table but this time I’ve added color to it to show progress.  As you complete this it acts as a visual stimulus to show how well you are doing. This will really help to build your study habits correctly.  Put it up on a wall where you can easily see it.  It’ll help to keep you on track and keep motivated.