How parents can help ensure successful tutoring sessions.

While not all our students are K-12, a lot are, which means parents are involved in their student’s education. We understand that you are making an investment when you book a tutor with Hodis Learning & Music, which is why we want to offer some tips for how you can help us have productive tutoring sessions. These productive sessions will ultimately lead to your student’s success in the classroom and beyond!

Help Us Create a Quiet, Focused Learning Environment

HLM tutors and educators can meet wherever is best for you and your student. Sometimes that’s in your home and sometimes that’s a public location like a coffee shop or library. When choosing the location of your sessions, think of where would be the best for your student. While it’s convenient to have an educator come to your home, make sure there is a quiet space with limited distractions for us to work. Perhaps a busy kitchen where siblings and parents are coming in and out isn’t the best location. Instead, have us work in an office, or a different room and make sure TVs, phones, tablets, and toys are put away or turned off. If we as educators notice in-home sessions aren’t productive, we might suggest moving sessions to a library where students can focus.

Share Information and Expectations with Us Before And Throughout Tutoring

As educators, we appreciate hearing how a student is performing in school and outside of sessions. The more information we have, the better we can focus our lessons to ensure students are getting the most out of our time together. If you received feedback from a teacher, let us know. If a student performed poorly on a test, we want to know about that and what concepts the student didn’t understand. While we as educators try to empower students to be responsible for their work and education, sometimes they don’t always tell us about homework, tests, or areas they need help with– they themselves might not even know because it feels overwhelming. As a parent, you have insight into how your student is feeling and performing.

Be Mindful of Reasonable Expectations Of Tutoring

Along the lines of tip #2, we want to gently remind parents to maintain reasonable expectations. If you want your student to score well on an exam, but you tell us about the exam the day before, there is only so much we as educators can do in one session. If exam scores are important to you and your student, let us know in advance. Even if you tell us weeks before the test, we will write down the date and plan our sessions accordingly! If you communicate an expectation to us, we want to support you, which might mean sharing our expert opinion on how that goal can be achieved reasonably.

If you’re considering hiring a tutor, call us or email us to learn more.

Building strong study skills: active reading. Students sitting around a table with their tutor.

Note: This series details how to study smarter, not harder, to help students succeed in their academics. All information in this series draws upon principles from psychological research on learning and memory.

Have you ever read a chapter in your textbook and later realized that you missed a lot of important points? If so, you’re not alone. Reading a textbook can be challenging, especially when dozens of key points are interspersed throughout 15-20 pages of material. Many students read quickly and don’t stop to ask questions, which leads to ineffective learning. This is called passive reading.

Learn how to get more out of your reading with the following tips for active reading.

How To Employ Active Reading

  • Predict: read all of the headings and subheadings in the chapter and take note of the key terms. Use this information to predict what each section will discuss and how they will all relate to each other.
  • Externally process: read aloud or think aloud. Some students have an easier time reading aloud. Some students find it helpful to alternate between reading out loud and in their head. And thinking aloud can be a great way to connect ideas for most students.
  • Activate: connect your reading to prior knowledge. Take a second to stop after a main idea and see if you can connect the information to other topics in or outside of the course.
  • Infer: while reading, think about how what you’re learning relates to the main ideas of the course content.
  • Clarify: if you don’t understand a part of the text, pause to clarify the confusion before moving on.
  • Visualize: as you read, picture the content in your mind.
  • Question: ask yourself questions about the content. Use these questions to predict, activate, infer, and clarify. And use questions to test yourself as you are reading.

Why It Works

Active reading helps you understand the individual parts of your material while also providing a framework to integrate the information into a holistic understanding.

Summary

Active reading may be challenging to implement all at once. Try introducing one or two active reading strategies at a time until you are comfortable using them all together. Active reading may take more effort and time than passive reading, but it is worth it!

Keep up with our weekly Building Strong Study Skills series to learn the most effective study strategies and succeed in your academics. Schedule a session with one of our expert tutors today to receive all the information and guidance you need to gain a deeper understanding of your academics and perform better on your tests! Building effective study habits takes time, so the sooner you get help, the better prepared you will be by the time finals roll around.

Read Other Articles in The Building Strong Study Skills Series

Sources:

  • Terry, W.S. (2018). Learning and Memory: Basic Principles, Processes, and Procedures, Fifth Edition. New York, Routledge, a Taylor and Francis Group. ISBN 978-1-13-864591-2.
  • Rhodes, M.G., Cleary, A.M. and DeLosh, E.L. (2020). A Guide to Effective Studying and Learning: Practical Strategies from the Science of Learning. New York, Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-021447-0 (pbk).
Building Strong Study Skill Series: Flashcards. Students studying with a tutor.

Note: This study skills series details how to study smarter, not harder, to help students succeed in their academics. All information in this series draws upon principles from psychological research on learning and memory.

Flashcards were probably one of the first study skills you ever used. They’re relatively easy to make and easy to study from. But many students don’t use flashcards to their full potential. In this article, we’ll talk about ways to use flashcards more effectively to optimize your study time.

Proper Technique

When a student uses flashcards properly, they naturally employ the self-testing technique:

Flashcards work best when the questions and answers are self-created. To do this, write questions that you came up with and write the answers in your own words. Don’t simply copy questions and answers from your book.

If you have a study guide with written questions, then at least write the answers to those questions in your own words on your flashcards. However, to make your set of flashcards more effective, consider adding self-created questions.

Tips for Success

Write free-response questions instead of questions that elicit multiple choice or true-false answers.

Why It Works

Students encode the information through the very process of making flashcards. Students further encode that information when they come up with answers to their questions. Also, research shows that the most powerful type of learning occurs when students retrieve information from their memory.

Summary

When used properly, students use flashcards to self-test. Self-testing and spaced practice are the two most effective study skills. But they’re not the only study skills, and should still be used with other techniques:

Keep up with our weekly Building Strong Study Skills series to learn the most effective study strategies and succeed in your academics. Schedule a session with one of our expert tutors today to receive all the information and guidance you need to gain a deeper understanding of your academics and perform better on your tests! Building effective study habits takes time, so the sooner you get help, the better prepared you will be by the time finals roll around.

Read Other Articles in The Building Strong Study Skills Series

Sources:

  • Terry, W.S. (2018). Learning and Memory: Basic Principles, Processes, and Procedures, Fifth Edition. New York, Routledge, a Taylor and Francis Group. ISBN 978-1-13-864591-2.
  • Rhodes, M.G., Cleary, A.M. and DeLosh, E.L. (2020). A Guide to Effective Studying and Learning: Practical Strategies from the Science of Learning. New York, Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-021447-0 (pbk).
Building Strong Study Skill Series: Self-Testing. Students studying with a tutor.

Note: This series details how to study smarter, not harder, to help students succeed in their academics. All information in this series draws upon principles from psychological research on learning and memory.

Throughout this series, we’ve covered a broad range of study skills. According to effect sizes in the literature, some of these skills are not very effective (Study Habits You Should Knock Part I and II), while others are moderately effective (Interleaved StudyingSelf-ExplanationElaborative Interrogation). By far, however, spaced practice and self-testing are the most effective study techniques.

So what is self-testing and how do you do it?

Proper Technique

Self-testing consists of testing your knowledge independently. It can take many forms: answering questions at the end of the chapter, flashcards, online review quizzes, etc.

Tips for Success

Self-testing is most effective in a free-recall format, as opposed to a recognition format like true-false or multiple choice questions.

Creating your own questions for self-testing increases the effectiveness of this study technique even further!

Why It Works

Research shows that the most powerful type of learning occurs when students retrieve information from their memory.

Summary

Self-testing is a straightforward study technique that most students already use. For the best results, try creating your own free-recall questions.

Keep up with our weekly Building Strong Study Skills series to learn the most effective study strategies and succeed in your academics. Schedule a session with one of our expert tutors today to receive all the information and guidance you need to gain a deeper understanding of your academics and perform better on your tests! Building effective study habits takes time, so the sooner you get help, the better prepared you will be by the time finals roll around.

Read Other Articles in The Building Strong Study Skills Series

Sources:

  • Terry, W.S. (2018). Learning and Memory: Basic Principles, Processes, and Procedures, Fifth Edition. New York, Routledge, a Taylor and Francis Group. ISBN 978-1-13-864591-2.
  • Rhodes, M.G., Cleary, A.M. and DeLosh, E.L. (2020). A Guide to Effective Studying and Learning: Practical Strategies from the Science of Learning. New York, Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-021447-0 (pbk).
Spring Cleaning for Students. Picture shows students walking across campus.

Flowers are blooming, days are longer, pollen is swirling through the air, and for students, the end of the school year is in sight! But don’t start slipping in your study habits yet! If anything, now is a great time to tidy up your study and school routine so you can finish the semester strong. Below are tips for spring cleaning up your school habits:

Clean out your backpack:

Okay I get it. If you’re on spring break, the last thing you want to do is touch or even look at your backpack! It’s probably been stuffed out of sight under your bed or in a corner not to be thought about until Monday morning after break.

But may I gently suggest– perhaps Sunday night, as you sadly set your alarm to wake up early for school the next day– take your backpack and clear everything out of it. All those papers, food wrappers, books, anything else that you’ve left in there. I recommend setting a timer for 15 minutes to just clear everything out.

Set aside the books, binders, notebooks, and anything else you’ll need for the next day of classes. Throw away trash or anything you don’t need. Set aside past assignments that you think you might need for finals studying.

This physical act of cleaning serves a couple purposes. First, it might help you feel productive and slightly more organized for the start of classes. Additionally, you can start to think about what you need to finish the semester on a good note. Do you see an assignment you didn’t do well on? Instead of throwing it away, hold onto it so you can discuss the assignment with your teacher.

Check your grades:

Perhaps you avoided thinking about your grades for the last couple of weeks. However, now is the time to really take a look at where you are in your classes and what it will take to improve your grades, if that’s something you need to do. Are there any large assignments coming up at the end of the term? Perhaps your last graded exam will be the final, which you need to ace. Start planning and preparing for what you need to do to get the best grades you can. Set a S.M.A.R.T Goal, hire a tutor, or prepare to use the study skills described in this blog series.

Use a planner:

If you have a planner that you’ve diligently been using to track assignments and due dates all school year, keep it up! If you haven’t or if you’ve fallen off of using your planner, now is the perfect time to start or get back into it. Start tracking your assignments and activities. Block out study times and plan which days you’ll be doing your work. Now is the time to stay on top of your assignments and it’s certainly not the time to fall behind on due dates because there are limited opportunities to make up that work.

Evaluate your habits:

Finally, take a bit of time to reflect on your study and work habits from the past semester. Were there things you were doing that didn’t really help you or made things more difficult? If so, think about how you can take action to change those habits. Perhaps you were regularly going to bed way too late, which made you consistently late to school and tired in your classes. Commit to going to bed earlier during these last few months of school. Did you only study the night before a test? Set a study schedule for yourself, or talk to a teacher or tutor about how to best study before your next exam.

Schedule a session with one of our tutors today!

Check out our tips for staying productive over Spring Break!

Building Strong Study Skills: Spaced Practice

Note: This series details how to study smarter, not harder, to help students succeed in their academics. All information in this series draws upon principles from psychological research on learning and memory.

Have you ever put off studying for a test until the night before? How much caffeine did it take to get through the hours of studying? How many hours of sleep did you lose to studying? And do you remember any of the material that you studied?

Studying all of your material in a session right before the test is called massed practice, or cramming. Spaced practice is the exact opposite of cramming and offers significant benefits.

Proper Technique

Spaced practice consists of breaking up your studying into smaller sessions over a longer period of time. It is usually recommended that students study their material on days that they don’t have the class they’re studying for.

For example, if a student has a test in two weeks, a good study practice would be to study, say, 60 minutes on each day that the student does not have that class. If there are four days each week that a student doesn’t have class, that adds up to eight hours of studying!

But students shouldn’t study for a particular subject for 60 minutes straight – they should interleave their studying with other topics.

Tips for Success

Students need to be on top of their studies in order to use spaced practice effectively. Plan out your study days and times to make sure you are on track and prepared for your test. Our tutors are the perfect resource for developing better study habits and can help you make study plans.

Why It Works

Research shows that studying for a total of five hours over a two week period, as opposed to five hours before the test, gives students a greater ability to learn the material and helps them retain the knowledge for a longer period of time.

But why? Learning and memory researchers have a couple leading explanations. The first is that studying for a long period of time offers diminishing returns; or, the longer you study, the less effective it is. After a while, the subject becomes monotonous and students lose focus.

The second theory explains that spaced practice provides a framework of reminding. The more a student is reminded of their material, the stronger their memories of that material become. And, frequent reminding also provides the student with more opportunities to make connections among different ideas.

Summary

Cramming is not a good study habit. Spaced practice provides students with better results and retention of material. And it’s easy to implement! Contact us today to begin building more effective study habits with one of our tutors.

Read Other Articles in The Building Strong Study Skills Series

Sources:

  • Terry, W.S. (2018). Learning and Memory: Basic Principles, Processes, and Procedures, Fifth Edition. New York, Routledge, a Taylor and Francis Group. ISBN 978-1-13-864591-2.
  • Rhodes, M.G., Cleary, A.M. and DeLosh, E.L. (2020). A Guide to Effective Studying and Learning: Practical Strategies from the Science of Learning. New York, Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-021447-0 (pbk).
Building Strong Study Skills: Elaborative Interrogation

Note: This series details how to study smarter, not harder, to help students succeed in their academics. All information in this series draws upon principles from psychological research on learning and memory.

The other day, one of my high school students asked, “Where does wind come from?” My student had taken chemistry and physics already, so I helped him find the answer by asking him these questions:

“How does uneven heating of the earth create changes in air pressure? How do these changes in air pressure create wind?”

Together, we found that uneven heating patterns lead to high and low pressure patches of air around the globe. A rush of air, or wind, is created because air travels from high pressure to low pressure areas to reach equilibrium.

My student and I practiced elaborative interrogation, or using “how” and “why” questions to enhance memory and understanding of course material.

Proper Technique

Use “how” and “why” questions to study your course material. For example, say that you are learning about the greenhouse effect. A good question to ask is “How does the greenhouse effect cause global warming?” And you may answer, “Sunlight reflected from the earth’s surface is prevented by greenhouse gasses from leaving the atmosphere. This retained heat leads to warmer temperatures.”

Tips for Success

This technique works best for memorizing concepts related to processes, events, and people. Elaborative interrogation may be difficult or nonsensical to use for other topics.

Elaborative interrogation is only effective when the student has background knowledge on the subject to accurately answer their self-created questions. If a student creates incorrect answers, the point is lost.

Why It Works

Elaborative interrogation works by activating prior knowledge and connecting new knowledge to it. Think of your memory as a giant web of information. If a new piece of information fits nicely with an existing strand of knowledge, then it will stick better. But if your new knowledge has no strand to stick to, then it may get lost easily.

Summary

Elaborative interrogation is a helpful study technique, especially for memorizing and understanding information related to people, places, and processes. Students of all ages can use it. If you don’t have any prior knowledge on a subject, however, it may be difficult to answer questions or to come up with questions in the first place. It’s an easy method to use, so try it out for your next test!

Read Other Articles in The Building Strong Study Skills Series

Sources:

  • Terry, W.S. (2018). Learning and Memory: Basic Principles, Processes, and Procedures, Fifth Edition. New York, Routledge, a Taylor and Francis Group. ISBN 978-1-13-864591-2.
  • Rhodes, M.G., Cleary, A.M. and DeLosh, E.L. (2020). A Guide to Effective Studying and Learning: Practical Strategies from the Science of Learning. New York, Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-021447-0 (pbk).
Why you should hire a tutor for essay help.

Hiring a tutor doesn’t always have to be on a long-term basis. Here at Hodis Learning & Music, we offer on-call tutoring for occasions when you only need a tutor for a short period of time. One of those times just might be when you have an essay to write. Whether it’s an English essay, research paper, or your personal statement for college applications, our expert tutors at HLM can make writing your next essay a breeze! So how exactly can our tutors help you with your essay writing?


The Brainstorm Session

The first step for writing any assignment is to figure out what to write about. Your tutor can help you focus on the topic of your essay to make it relevant and easy to compose. Tell us what book your essay is based on, and we’ll help determine the best angle to focus your writing on. If it’s a personal statement, all of our tutors have experience with the competitive college application process. We’ll offer advice on how to make your essay stand out to college admissions.


Outlining Your Essay

Once you and your tutor have established a topic, we’ll work with you to outline your essay. Every essay must be constructed around a solid thesis statement, which your tutor will perfect with you. If you’re unfamiliar with an essay format, your tutor will guide you through the process and make it easy to understand. Additionally, your tutor can help you find supporting evidence in your text, or direct you on where to find relevant and reliable sources.


Editing and Proofreading

After you’ve written the first draft, your tutor will edit and proofread your essay. From spelling and grammar mistakes to word choice to paragraph topics, your tutor will offer feedback that can strengthen your essay for the next draft. And of course, your tutor can be the last set of eyes on your essay before you submit your final version.

From these sessions, you’ll learn the tools and skills you’ll need to ace any essay or report!

To see who our expert writing tutors are, click here. And learn more about Hodis Learning & Music on-call rates, or reach out to our team to get help with your essay writing today.

Building Strong Study Skill Series: Self-explanation. Students studying with a tutor.

Note: This series details how to study smarter, not harder, to help students succeed in their academics. All information in this series draws upon principles from psychological research on learning and memory.

How often do you teach material to yourself as if you are the teacher? Have you ever explained a concept to yourself to check your understanding? Have you ever presented a PowerPoint to yourself?

These techniques are considered self-explanation study skills. To define the term, self-explanation is when you explain course material to yourself.

Proper Technique

Study a topic or several topics in your course and then explain those topics to yourself. You may choose to explain the techniques verbally or through writing.

Pull up your teacher’s slides and present them to yourself as if you are the teacher. Or make an outline of all the headings and subheadings in a certain chapter in your textbook and use them as a guide to explain the textbook in your own words. Or explain a tricky concept to yourself after reading about it.

Beware

Self-explanation is not helpful if your explanations are coming straight from texts. Your explanation must come from your own brain and in your own words to be effective!

Why It Works

Self-explanation is a powerful and effective tool for several reasons.

This study skill helps students identify connections between ideas they have learned so far in their course. Drawing these connections is crucial to gaining a deeper understanding of the material.

Being able to explain a topic in your own words demonstrates a certain level of mastery. If you are able to explain a subject simply, clearly, and unscripted then you likely understand the material pretty well.

On the flipside, self-explanation is also a sure-fire way to identify gaps in knowledge or understanding. If you can’t explain a concept or if your explanation sounds “off,” then you will know instantly that you need to refer to your notes or textbook to improve your understanding.

Summary

Self-explanation is a powerful study technique that is easy to implement, but isn’t enough alone to ensure you are retaining material. It should be used in conjunction with interleaving and other helpful study techniques that will be detailed in coming installments of this series.

Keep up with our weekly Building Strong Study Skills series to learn the most effective study strategies and succeed in your academics. Schedule a session with one of our expert tutors today to receive all the information and guidance you need to gain a deeper understanding of your academics and perform better on your tests! Building effective study habits takes time, so the sooner you get help, the better prepared you will be by the time finals roll around.

Read Other Articles in The Building Strong Study Skills Series

Sources:

  • Terry, W.S. (2018). Learning and Memory: Basic Principles, Processes, and Procedures, Fifth Edition. New York, Routledge, a Taylor and Francis Group. ISBN 978-1-13-864591-2.
  • Rhodes, M.G., Cleary, A.M. and DeLosh, E.L. (2020). A Guide to Effective Studying and Learning: Practical Strategies from the Science of Learning. New York, Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-021447-0 (pbk).
Building Strong Study Skill Series: Interleaved Studying. Students studying with a tutor.

Note: This series details how to study smarter, not harder, to help students succeed in their academics. All information in this series draws upon principles from psychological research on learning and memory.

How do you break up your studying when reviewing several different subjects? Do you study one subject for an hour and then switch to the next? Do you study for one subject on one day and another subject on a different day? This method is called blocked practice.

Now that we’ve gotten the worst study techniques out of the way, we will discuss effective study techniques. Today we talk about interleaved studying. Interleaving involves alternating between two or more subjects in a single study session. You can use interleaving for academics, music, and art!

Benefits of Interleaving

Compared to the blocked practice, you can retain information better with interleaving, acquire skills more effectively, and improve your abilities. These phenomena are part of the interleaving effect.

How to Interleave

To interleave your assigned readings, you may alternate between reading your physics book and your math book. Similarly, to interleave piano practice, you may switch between perfecting your performance piece, working on your technique workbook, and learning theory. To interleave illustration practice, you may rotate between using pen and ink, watercolor, and acrylics.

Interleave Properly

Everyone is different, so you have to practice interleaving to find what works best for you! But here are some general guidelines:

  • Typically, interleaving works best when you study each topic  for about 15 minutes before switching to the next. But this number ranges from 10-30 minutes depending on the person and subject. And, interleaving various subjects may look different. For example, interleaving readings may work best when you spend 15 minutes on each, whereas interleaving math and physics problems may work best when you spend 10 minutes on each.
  • Interleaving works best if you alternate between similar subjects, not identical ones, but also ones that aren’t too different. For example, it is more useful to interleave, say, math and chemistry than math and history. You could even interleave chemistry practice problems in thermodynamics and electrochemistry.
  • Interleaving is usually best when alternating between 2-3 subjects, but not more than that.

Warning

Interleaving is challenging – especially at first. Many students give up because they think they learned less in interleaving practice than in their blocked practice. And they very well may have had less success when they were getting used to the new study skill. However, once students get the hang of interleaving, they are more likely to retain the material.

Summary

Although interleaving can be challenging for beginners, it is more effective for retaining material, mastering skills, and improving your abilities. Although interleaving is effective, it shouldn’t be your only study skill. It should be used in conjunction with other study techniques that will be detailed in coming installments of this series.

Keep up with our weekly Building Strong Study Skills series to learn the most effective study strategies and succeed in your academics. Schedule a session with one of our expert tutors today to receive all the information and guidance you need to gain a deeper understanding of your academics and perform better on your tests! Building effective study habits takes time, so the sooner you get help, the better prepared you will be by the time finals roll around.

Read Other Articles in The Building Strong Study Skills Series

Sources:

  • Terry, W.S. (2018). Learning and Memory: Basic Principles, Processes, and Procedures, Fifth Edition. New York, Routledge, a Taylor and Francis Group. ISBN 978-1-13-864591-2.
  • Rhodes, M.G., Cleary, A.M. and DeLosh, E.L. (2020). A Guide to Effective Studying and Learning: Practical Strategies from the Science of Learning. New York, Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-021447-0 (pbk)