Keep your desk clear

Take some time to clear all the sheets or knick-knacks of your desk. A clear desk really does help contribute towards a clear mind. It helps remove possible distractions that you can mess around with and most importantly helps target your focus on just the work you have in front of you. While it does seem quite annoying to keep clearing your desk, it is honestly one of the most useful tips, especially if you find yourself getting distracted or unfocused quite often.

Create folders for all your subjects

This a general school tip which has become significantly more relevant and important during online school. Take some time before Winter Break ends to make subject folders either directly on your PC or on Google Drive if that’s what your school uses. Make sure to save the relevant worksheets/documents/images in the designated subject folders with a name that makes sense! This tip will save you so much time in the future as you don’t need to look through hundreds of emails or messages to find the right file.

For every minute spent in organizing, an hour is earned.

Benjamin Franklin

Additionally, create a “general” folder to store all your other school sheets in, such as timetables or administrative documents (e.g. Policy Documents ). If you want to go even further, within subject folders, create sub-folders which cover part of the course. For example within “Chemistry”,  a sub-folder could be “Organic Chemistry”. This will help you keep extremely organised and will come in handy when you have to revise for tests and exams as you can find all the necessary work/information sheets very quickly and easily.

Try to learn actively

As some classes are conducted online, it is becoming harder to stay fully engaged in the lessons. Furthermore with less and less class participation and discussion with other students, learning is becoming overall more difficult. To help counteract this, it is essential that you still use active methods to improve your memory and understanding of all the information. While it is easy to passively listen or simply regurgitate the information into notes, there are some more effective methods of learning which will help you tremendously for future revision as you will already have a very strong foundation. Here are some methods that personally really helped me :

• Try using flashcards/quizlet online for concise notes in subjects where you need to remember a lot of content such as definitions, dates or experiments. Flashcards are a great way of condensing your notes into a boiled down form and then can be used to actively test your memory and understanding of the subjects. That is why it key not to just read them but instead to give yourself time to think before looking at the answer.
• Use colour in your notes. Colours are super important as they allow you to think about which points/words are key and therefore are a way of highlighting and separating them. Furthermore, certain colours are shown to boost student capabilities. Blue has links to productivity and the colour green is seen to boost focus.