Need help from those with non-science kids on study skills

[KarenNC]

I'm about at my wit's end trying to teach physical science to my daughter. I have always had a fairly easy time picking up on science and math, but she's my husband (the English lit major) made over! She's pulling a high A in an honors high school level English class and doing abysmally in science. She's working through Saxon Alg I with a B average at the moment (we switched from Singapore to Saxon a few years ago and it's been great). Her annual testing has always been at gifted levels in language/verbal skills, just at grade level in math/science.

 

I tried PLATO physical science this summer, thinking the visual and interactive nature would help---it didn't. We switched to Holt with physical textbook, directed reading sheets, study guide, since that worked fairly well for life and earth science---it hasn't helped enough. We go over the sections of the chapter, review questions, and the study guide, do hands-on experiments, and virtual applications (from PLATO).

 

I need to figure out some study methods that will help her now and in high school (which is why I'm posting on the high school board) so that she doesn't totally wreck her GPA and any chance at merit aid. I am seriously doubting we will even make it to algebra-based high school physics at this point. She has some interest in forensics (though mostly the psychological aspects) and strongly prefers biology over any other hard science, with physics at the very bottom of the scale. Currently, I'm hoping to get her through bio, chem, and environmental science for lab sciences. Any suggestions from anyone with a similar kid?

[Stars]

My kids are little bitty, but I was a similar child to the one you're describing.  Can you have your daughter take the chapter she's studying and rewrite it like an English paper?  Make the subject the same as the chapter and have her write a paragraph explaining to you each concept or point you want her to remember.  I realize this might be pretty time-intensive, but I know that for me, science (and math) were just a bunch of nebulous facts not anchored to anything.  Organizing them -- and explaining them in her own words -- might help her understand and retain them in a way for which she's already shown an aptitude.  I doubt she'd be enthusiastic about the idea of so much extra work, but it might help her in the long run.  Good luck!

[mims]

I've found memorizing the terms with flashcards has helped. If they can memorize, the other things start connecting a little easier. My best tool has been quizlet. A lot of people have flashcards on there for the different science publishers.

[KarenNC]

Thanks for the suggestions! I think we are going to start with the outlining (followed by short essays on specific topics) and flashcards, as well as using the PLATO online quizzes as practice with the Holt test as the final.

[1Togo]

The following is a study method we use for textbook subjects except for the hard sciences.

1. 1st day of new chapter - make vocabulary flash cards for the entire chapter. Read set # of pages & take Cornell notes.

2. Next day & every day until the chapter is finished - read a set # of pages, take Cornell notes, study flashcards, teach/lecture your notes to an imaginary class.

Note: Some students need to lecture every day; others don't need this.

3. If the chapter has review questions and or a study guide, these are added to the study mix.

The amount of study/lecturing varies with each student and the difficulty of the material.

Our oldest child used this method in college and made excellent grades. When he settled into a class, he could determine the exact number of times he needed to lecture his notes for an "A." Regular study meant he was always prepared for pop quizzes and class discussions.

Btw, lecturing works best when student is standing and using varied tones.

 

Ds also took notes for lit classes; i.e. more like annotation on paper. Again, the at-home work meant he was always prepared for class discussions and had done much of the leg work for analysis papers.

[PeterPan]

Have you thought about doing a more humanities-friendly approach to the science?  There are reading lists available for every science topic.  You can pair the with a video course or a text that she simply reads, then do either 2 major projects (that pull everything together and have a strong presentation element to draw on her humanities strengths) or a series of labs.  

 

The *level* of the content she's reading and interacting needs to be high school or adult-level, but there's no law about exactly *what* the content is.  High Tech High out in CA uses creative projects in their biology classes.  Some of the fanciest prep schools (think Exeter) use reading lists.  In fact, a lot of times the lists I'm talking about are found in AP classes.  With those kinds of math scores, I would guess the math in science will give her fits.  Physical science, chemistry, and physics are all going to be math-intensive.  That doesn't mean she can't connect with the humanities side of science, the HUMAN side of science, the stories, the literature, the essays, debates, and controversies.  And when she *connects* with those stories, then maybe select labs or projects will be more meaningful to her.  And so it doesn't look like the chem that someone else's kid did.  The world will not end.  She's probably not going to pick a science class at the university for that one perfunctory science/math/CS class she might have to take.  

[Sisyphus]

My oldest is a humanities loving, non math science guy. We are struggling through chemistry. What I find that is working is using texts to explain the concepts that are below grade level- for chem, prentice hall chemistry books specifically. They are middle school books, but they "click" for Ds because the math is taken out of the concepts. then we work the math issues separately as needed. He struggled to grasp the whole picture of the topics when bogged down by minutiae, but the conceptual introduction in easier books made it more accessible. He used, and hated, those books in middle school, but now that he is older they seem to work great as a broad overview of the topics in his high school course and he appreciates the simplicity of explanations.

 

He still hates science though, lol.

[klmama]

Is she having trouble with all topics, or is it just the chemistry part?  I found that the first several videos in each section of Georgia Public Broadcasting's online course Chemistry: A Study of Matter helped a lot with understanding of the introductory topics for my humanities kid.  http://www.gpb.org/chemistry-physics/students/all  There are note-taking pages you can print off from the website, as well as worksheets for practice. The physics course may help some, too, although I found it didn't work as well for adaptation for the physics in physical science.  If she likes the chem, though, the physics might be a good actual course for her, even if it's easier than some.

[PeterPan]

You might think about saving the GA PBS chem to use in entirety for high school.  We did physical science last year and just did the *labs* from the BJU and PH CIA physical science texts.  The GA PBS is a really decent normal chem program.  If you bring it down in part early, you're kind of cutting off good options for later, meaning you have to ramp up even more.  The Chem 101 videos that Timberdoodle sells would be a good supplement for your physical science this year and you can find the Disney Imagineering videos online or through your library.  We used those and then just googled to find more (Bill Nye, etc.) for a given topic.  

 

Btw, PH CIA puts their math in the text while BJU puts the math in the labs.  So my dd *did* the math for physical science, but she did it with me, in context.  

[KarenNC]

I think the main issue is that I evidently haven't taught her adequate study skills for areas that are more challenging for her. For this next chapter, I've done an outline of the chapter and am having her outline section by section, then compare to the outline I did. We'll also work with quizlet flashcards and an online "quiz yourself" for the textbook. I'll probably also have her do short summaries of each section from the outline as well as the practice short answer questions. We'll see how that does for this chapter, then modify as needed. The text switches to physics topics at this point, and she's already watched some of the Louis Bloomfield "How Things Work" intro lectures, so maybe this will go more smoothly.

[Nan in Mass]

This is probably not very helpful, but unless she wants to remember the material, she probably isn't going to remember it unless you put a ton of time into learning and reviewing it.  A simple way to do this, once she gets to the point where she can read the textbook and pick out the main points (rather than focusing on details or examples), is having her write a question for each important paragraph in the section.  If she writes it next to the paragraph then to study, she can go through asking herself the questions and seeing if she can answer them, checking the answer in the paragraph.  It helps to underline the answer or put brackets around it.  It is important to do it again BEFORE she has forgotten again, because otherwise, she will spend all her time getting the material into her head again rather than just reviewing it, and it will take forever and she will hate it even more than she already does.  This may be every ten minutes at first and then every hour and then every few hours and then and only then, every day.  At least that is the way it works for me.  I don't memorize easily.  She can start by getting a few paragraphs down and then slowly adding more.  Once she can do that for the section, then you can ask her to narrate the section to you.  There isn't much use getting her to do that, though, until she is able to pick out the important bits, write questions for them, and memorize them.  It is important also to have her try to get a sense of what the textbook is going to teach her by reading the table of context, then all the section headings in the book.  When she tackles a new chapter, she can read the section headings again, the picture captions, any graphs or diagrams, and the first and last sentence of each paragraph.  That will give her enough of a framework that she has someplace to PUT the new information in the chapter as she aquires it.  She may also have to memorize the vocabulary via flashcards or something, although I found that mine were usually able to remember most of it by the time they had laboriously figured out what each paragraph was saying, since this involved looking up any unknown words.  If she has trouble forming questions, write out the question words on an index card and have her try to start a question about the information in the paragraph beginning with each of those words.  Usually one or two become the obvious choice.  The point behind writing questions is that it simulates (notice I did not say sTimulates lol) interest in the material and makes it easier for one's brain to hang onto the material.

 

HTH

Nan

[1Togo]

Adding this.

 

I do teach our children to outline, but we don't use it with textbooks because it takes too much time.  Cornell notes are like outlining but much faster - paper folded in half, main idea on the left, and supporting ideas on the right, main idea on the left, supporting ideas on the right...  Cornell works well with textbooks and with oral lectures, which move quickly in the college classroom.  Also, Cornel notes can be used as Nan suggested, and we have done this.  Questions on the left and answers on the right.  The student studies Cornell notes like flashcards; i.e. learn the term/idea/question on the left and then review/teach/lecture the information on the right.

 

If the outlining doesn't go well or becomes tedious, give Cornell notes a go.  Over the years, we tried outlining, mind mapping and other methods of taking notes.  Learning to take Cornell notes and study from them falls into the set of my top college prep skills along with strong math skills, insightful essay writing (w/documentation), lit analysis/annotation, and critical reading.  Also, decision making and life skills.