How to Teach Study Skills Explicitly (Instead of Hoping Students Have Them)

Study skills are treated by most schools as something students either have or don't, and by most teachers as outside the scope of instruction. The result is that students who enter school with study habits (usually from households where academic practices are modeled) do well, and students who don't have those models struggle — not because they're less capable, but because they were never taught what effective studying looks like.

The research on study skills is now extensive enough to be definitive: some study strategies work dramatically better than others, and students typically don't use the best ones because no one taught them. Highlighting, rereading, and cramming are among the least effective strategies — and are among the most common.

The Best and Worst Strategies

The research-supported hierarchy, roughly from most to least effective:

High effectiveness:

• Spaced practice: Distributing study time across multiple sessions rather than massing it before a deadline. Students who study for 20 minutes a day for five days learn more than students who study for 90 minutes the night before.
• Retrieval practice (practice testing): Actively recalling information without looking at notes, rather than passively reviewing. Flashcards, practice tests, and blank-paper recall are all retrieval practice.
• Interleaving: Mixing different types of problems or topics in a study session rather than doing all of one type before moving to the next.

Low effectiveness:

• Rereading notes or textbook passages
• Highlighting or underlining (doesn't force processing)
• Massed practice ("cramming")
• Summarizing (low effect without the retrieval component)

Most students study using low-effectiveness strategies because they feel easier and more immediately satisfying. Highlighting a page feels productive. Recalling information from a blank page is uncomfortable and slow — which is exactly why it works.

Teaching Retrieval Practice Directly

Retrieval practice is the single highest-impact strategy and the one students are most likely not using. Teach it explicitly:

"Instead of rereading your notes tonight, try this: close your notes, take out a blank piece of paper, and write down everything you remember about today's topic. Don't look at your notes until you've written everything you can. Then check your notes to see what you missed. The checking is important — you need accurate feedback on what you actually know."

This is not a complicated strategy. Students who haven't been taught it don't use it because it doesn't feel like studying — it feels like taking a test. Naming why it works (desirable difficulty: the discomfort of retrieval is the mechanism of learning) helps students tolerate the discomfort.

Practice it in class: give students two minutes to recall everything they remember from yesterday on a blank paper before discussing anything. This is both a formative assessment and a study skills lesson.

Spacing and the Calendar

Spaced practice requires planning, which is why students don't do it spontaneously. Cramming is the default because the deadline is the only planning prompt most students have.

Teach students to work backward from a test date and schedule study sessions:

• Test on Friday → study sessions Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday (not Thursday only)
• Each session reviews different material with some retrieval of previous sessions

This is a planning skill, not just a study skill. Students who don't have academic planning habits need explicit instruction in how to use a calendar for study scheduling. Five minutes on this in any class that gives significant tests is worth the time.

Note-Taking as Study Prep

Most students take notes and then study from those notes — which produces rereading as the primary study strategy. The more effective approach: take notes in a format that builds retrieval practice into the review.

Cornell Notes are designed for this: the narrow left column is for questions or keywords; the wide right column is for notes; the bottom section is for summary. Review means covering the right column and trying to answer the left-column questions. This is retrieval practice built into the note structure.

Students who don't use Cornell Notes can apply the same principle: after taking notes, write a question in the margin for each main idea. Review means trying to answer the questions without looking at the notes.

The Interleaving Counterintuition

Interleaving — mixing problem types in a study session — produces better learning than blocked practice (doing all of one type before moving to the next), but students and teachers alike resist it because blocked practice feels more orderly.

In math: instead of doing 20 fraction problems, then 20 decimal problems, then 20 percentage problems, do a session with all three types mixed. The performance during the session is usually worse than blocked practice; the retention a week later is usually better.

The performance-during-session versus retention-later distinction is important. Strategies that feel more effective during study often produce less durable learning. Strategies that feel harder during study often produce more durable learning. This counterintuition is worth explaining to students directly.

Your Next Step

For your next unit, add one class period — or even twenty minutes — explicitly devoted to teaching one study strategy. Teach retrieval practice with a blank-paper recall exercise on material from the previous class. Explain what the research says about why it works. Give students the opportunity to experience the discomfort and see that they can recall more than they expected. That experience is the beginning of a study habit change.