Study Tactics

Planning and Study Cycle

Suteja,

How to structure your weekly Study plan and how each study session should be? Let us
discuss this.

Plan your Study hours

Let us look at how you can plan a week. The intent here is when we meet each month we can
review and discuss what progress you made and address the challenges if any you have faced.

Planning can happen at the beginning of the week and planning session can’t be more than 2
hours for a one-week study plan. You can try bi-weekly plan as well if that feasible for you.

Avaiable Hours Scope Content Definition of Done

• Calculate • Split the time • What is that you • What will you
Number of days between PCM & will do in achieve at the
+ available Study SES. choosen subject end of the week
Hours • Set priority it will be scope and how does
• 7 Days 6 Hours Iteration • Ex: MTG , the sucsess
per day and Number Physics looks like for the
target to clock at Galaxy,Cengage defined scope
80% etc. • I will complete
[Link] • what you pick all the solutions
34 hours above depends from Physics
on which Galaxy Newton's
iteration you are Laws of Motion ,
in I

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Study Tactics

Weekend Activity
On Sunday you dedicate one hour to two hours to review & retrospect and plan for the next
month. Important is what improvements you can take forward? What was your velocity of
study. Were you able to cover all that was planned? What were your impediments? Did you
discuss anything with the teachers? In summary do following 3 steps

• Quizzes as revision
Revision • Spot weak mastery
• Take home test

• Analyze test results

Retrospect • What are things it went wrong
• What was your study velocity ?

Plan • Taking improvement suggestions from Retro sessions

• Plan for the next iteration

The JEE concepts discussion can happen only after you have covered the MTG

Structure of Intense Study Session

1 Set a Goal 2 – 3 mins Decide what you want to accomplish

2 Study with Focus 45-55 mins At most concentration – Interact with the material, make notes
3 Reward yourself 10 mins Take break - walk
4 Review 5 mins Go over what you just studied

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Study Tactics

Problem-Solving Approach

Many times, you are stuck while solving a problem and you will be endlessly starting at a blank
page! – try following techniques.

Spend at least five minutes going through the reading or class notes to see if you can figure out
how to begin the problem.

If after five minutes you are still stumped, you should look only at the first or second step of
worked example and continue solving the problem.

If you’re still at a loss, spend another five minutes on step three, and continue in this way until
you have solved the problem. Using this method, you maximize your opportunity to solve
problems independently. “Walk around the problem”, view it from all sides, and you will be
able to reveal the answer.

What if still not able to solve it?

Chances are there you may go down looking all the steps. If the trend is at least 5 to 10
problems are going in that way and neither you are able to solve nor ending up with wrong
answers, better to halt the study and do Root Cause Analysis (RCA) of the situation. RCA is a
must if you are looking for solutions because you were not able to solve. It is time to address
issue- why you had to go through the solution. Categorise your situation to one of the following

1 Did you understand the problem?

2 Are you able to list the relevant concepts for solving the problems?
3 Are the concepts required to solving problem not taught?
4 Were you not able recollect the Concepts if they were already taught?
5 Is application of concepts turn out be a challenge?

Each of the above situations need to be discussed and addressed and there are ways. This is
where deliberate practice comes into play. You need to carefully start working towards
building stronger mental representations of the concepts through deliberate practice sessions.

It is better to solve one problem five different ways, than to solve five
problems one way.
-George Polya

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Study Tactics

What’s so Hard about Reading?

What happens when you read? Well, you begin reading and all is well until your mind starts to
wander. But your brain doesn’t immediately realize that it is no longer paying attention because
your eyes are still tracking the text. It’s not until you get farther down the page that you realize,
“oh, I stopped paying attention ages ago and have no idea what I’m reading!!!.
At this point what we do usually? We go back and reread the text from the beginning, but this
time around, you concentrate harder to keep yourself from running off the rails. And you will
probably get a little farther, but only a little, before the same thing happens again. How to
prevent this vicious cycle? Following active reading strategies with three steps should help.

• Give yourself a preview of what you’re about to read. How do you give the preview? Look at
the section headings, bold print, italicized words, and any charts or graphs in the portion of
reading you have chosen.
• Once you’ve looked at the bold and italicized text as well as charts and graphs, you still
need to do one more thing before you begin to read. You need to give yourself a reason to
read. So you need to come up with questions that you want the reading to answer for you.
Then you’ve tapped into your genuine curiosity and are much more motivated to read. Give
yourself a reason to read the text.
• Now that you’ve previewed the text, and you’ve generated interesting questions that you
hope the text will answer, you’re ready to begin reading. Here is the crucial instruction:
When you start, read only one paragraph at a time Just read the first paragraph or up to a
point where you get the answer to your first question whichever is early. Stop. Put the
information in the first paragraph in your own words.
Now move one to the second paragraph and do the same thing, except this time when you
paraphrase, fold in the information that was in the first paragraph. After you read the third
paragraph, your paraphrase should contain all of the information from the beginning of the
passage – and so and so forth. This way you beak a big task down into manageable chunks, yet
the information from the chunks is integrated into a complete understand of the topic at hand.
Though you read more slowly with this method you’re moving forward.