Top-of-page tips

Just a quick post about a simple strategy you can use when completing homework or practicing a new concept you're not totally familiar or comfortable with yet:

On the top of the sheet of paper on which you're working, write down the things you most need to remember for the procedure or the steps you need to take to complete whatever sort of problem you're working on.

For example, I was working with a student on her math homework today, and she's forgetting how to start the procedure of simplifying. After talking through what she noticed about the steps we were taking to simplify expressions, she wrote on the top of her homework page
1. Distribute
2. Combine like terms
3. Continue until you don't have any more like terms

She was also having some trouble remembering how to combine positive and negative integers, so I suggested she also write Same signs, keep and add; different signs, subtract and keep the sign of the larger number. (You may have memorized this to the tune of "Row Row Row your Boat," which is another great memory strategy!)

Writing these notes out in a place you can see them as you work can do at least two things for you:

• First, having a visual of the steps or important things to remember, can take some of the load off of your working memory (which has limited capacity), so it's freed-up for the computational aspects of the work. 

• Secondly, writing down these notes or steps on your paper can help you to, over time, become more automatic in applying them. If you're in the habit of doing this with classwork, homework, and other times when you practice the concepts, you'll hopefully also remember to do the same on assessments right after they're handed out!

This can work for a variety of subjects too, not just math. For example, maybe you write the -ar verb endings on the top of a Spanish practice page, so you can reference it when conjugating verbs in sentences. Or, sketch out the chart you can use to find direct objects, indirect objects, predicate adjectives, and predicate nominatives.

What are some steps or procedures you might write out as a visual for other classes? If you have ideas, please leave them in the comment box below!