"The road to success runs uphill" -Willie Davis

STUDYING/HOMEWORK
-Keep yourself free from disturbances. Make a list of disturbances that interrupt your study. Think of ways to reduce or eliminate them. For example: if music helps - listen - if not turn it off.
-It's usually best to study by yourself.
-Put things in your own words
-Read at your own pace.
-Review material first by yourself and then with someone.
-Write down the answers to questions to keep it in your memory.
When you sit down to study, always have a pen, sharpened pencil, paper, notebook, and textbook/workbook so you do not have to keep looking for things and wasting time.

IMPROVING YOUR LISTENING ABILITY
Kids in school spend more time listening than doing anything else. Many minutes of class time are spent on things like directions and explanations. Here are four ways you can improve your listening skills:
FOCUS - Direct your attention to what the teacher is saying.
ASK - Ask questions about what the teacher is saying.
CONNECT - Connect the main ideas to the things you know.
PICTURE - Make mental pictures of important ideas.

Here are some other tips to improve your listening skills:
-Listen for keywords that tell you to do something. Verbs like read, work, study, tell, remember, and fill in, signal that something important is coming up.
-Listen for numbers, too. Are you supposed to read Chapter 11 or Chapters 11 and 12?
-Listen for repeated words. Your teacher will often repeat the important words.

From - The Parent Institute

LEARN HOW TO REMEMBER FACTS
From the multiplication tables in math to the periodic table in chemistry, students constantly have to memorize facts. Here are some tips to make it easier:
-Short lists are easier to learn than long lists. If you're memorizing the states and their capitals, it will take less time to memorize five lists of 10 than one list of 50.
-When memorizing a list, start in a different place each time. Otherwise, you'll tend to remember the beginning and the end in the list better than the items in the middle.
-Writing a fact over and over can help you memorize it. Just be sure you're spelling correctly. If you don't, you'll memorize the wrong spelling.

From - The Parent Institute

WORKING SMARTER AT TEST TIME
Day-by-day attention to note-taking, homework, and reading is the best study plan you can have for any test. If your work is up-to-date, you've already done most of the preparation you need before a test. Here are some other steps you can take to do the best possible job on your next big exam.

Write down the test date in your assignment book. Mark the test date in big colored letters so you can't miss it. In the spaces before the test date, write down "Study for test" so that you remember to work a little bit each day.

Write down what the test is going to cover. Find out from your teacher the material the test will cover -- a whole history unit or just one chapter? Fractions or decimals or both? See if you can find out from your teacher just what sort of test will be given. There are specific ways to prepare for each type.

Listen for hints about the test. In the days before a big test, most teachers review the material that the test will cover. This is the time to take good notes and underline or highlight whatever your teacher keeps repeating.

See your teacher about anything you don't understand. Sometimes it's hard for students who need help to ask for it. If you are not comfortable about asking questions in front of the whole class, see if you can catch your teacher at another time to answer any questions you have about the upcoming test or about material you don't understand. Maybe one more explanation of that science step or that word problem is all you need to remember it for good. When your teacher corrects your test later on, he or she is likely to remember and appreciate that you came for help on your own.

From - Help! I Have To Take a Test, by Louise Colligan