Conquering Those End-of-the-Chapter Questions

A Student Study Tip for Remembering What You Read

A common complaint of students is that they cannot remember what they read when they get to the end of a chapter. Answering those end-of-the-chapter questions can be a real chore because they do not have good strategies for holding onto the information as they read or for going back and finding it later.

Many students think that they just have to reread the chapter from the beginning over and over to locate the information.

In order to understand and remember what is read or heard, individuals must be able to visualize or make pictures in their mind, letting those pictures run like a movie. Three simple steps can be used to help students visualize, understand the remember information more easily. These are:

1. Picture
2. Replay, and
3. Retell

When your child is reading or listening, have him try to picture what is being said, to “make a movie” in his head. Then have him “replay the tape.” This is just like rewinding a tape on a VCR and viewing a section of it again. This replaying helps set the information into memory.

Have the child picture the information again, retelling it to you in detail as he sees it. Do this first with stories and oral directions. Then try it with content material such as Social Studies or Science.

When your child has questions to answer, have him rewind his “mental movie” to the section where the information can be found. Have him think, “Did I see that at the beginning, toward the middle, or at then end?” If he can’t remember, have him think, “What did I see at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end? Where does this question seem to fit?”

Once he has located a logical starting point, he can then go back and check in the book without doing a lot of unnecessary rereading.

[/cs_text][/cs_column][/cs_row][/cs_section][/cs_content]