Help with social studies homework: if you got stuck on your homework
Are you struggling with your social studies homework? If you are stuck and in need of help consider using these effective and scientifically supported homework study strategies.
- Quiz yourself each day
- Reduce your time texting. Seriously. Spending too much time texting and taking pictures of yourself is not only detrimental in that it literally alters the way your brain remembers events (i.e. it doesn’t because you were too busy taking pictures of yourself at the event and that is what your brain remembers) but it can also hurt your grades in class. Too much time spent on your phone increases anxiety (have you ever sat around all day waiting for a response to your text message instead of living your life or starting on your homework? Exactly) and it then effects your performance in school. Increased time on your cell phone will cause you to perform worse on your tests. So put it down for once and enjoy the real world.
- Stop forcing yourself to memorize
Studies indicate that the best way for you to remember information you recently learned is to test yourself. This means actively pulling the information out of your brain so that you build it up. This is called retrieval practice and the more you retrieve the information the more embedded it becomes.
Another relationship between using your cell phone (iPad, kindle, laptop, and all other technological devices) is lower physical activity. By spending more time on things like that, you stop exercising as much or engaging in even simple physical activity and this increases your stress and anxiety which causes you to perform worse on homework and tests. Science actually shows that you need to participate in aerobic exercises to improve your long term memory. So the answer is simple: put down your technological devices and engage in some physical activity. Reduce the anxiety in your life if you want to perform better on homework and get in better physical shape. This will open your brain up to learning.
Mnemonic devices are great when you need to memorize a long list of things you have to recall for a test or quiz. Memorization is a great skill for short term memory, but if you really want to commit something to long term memory then you need to use something other than rote memory. A mnemonic device can be the answer to that struggle.