All right, you say, I’m ready. I understand what the main ideas are. Now what? Glad you asked. Now your job is to come up with 2-3 questions your teacher might ask about each key concept you’ve identified.  If you’re in a math class, try and create a practice problem that involves the concept you’ve identified. If you’re in a different kind of class, try asking, who, what, when, where, why, how, and how many, and see what kinds of questions make sense for the teacher to ask. 

Mix up questions

Once you have a set of practice problems for your test, randomize them and practice a different concept for each question. Take some time every day to go through the questions and practice solving problems. The key here is to mix the questions up. Keep them in a different order, and only do 1 question for a particular concept. Maybe 2 if it’s really difficult. If you think of a question and don’t know the answer, that’s good! You’ve just found an area where you could use practice! Try to make each problem as different from the others as possible. You never know what the teacher might test you on, so variety is your friend. 

Problems with repetition

Our brains like repetition, when we see the same problem over and over again, and we finally solve it successfully, then we feel like we understand it. The problem with this method is that all of that problem solving happened in short term memory, so when you go back the next day, you don’t remember as much. So, instead of solving, for example, 10 exponent problems, solve 1 exponent problem, 1 geometry problem, 1 algebra problem, and then do that for 10 days. At the end of the 10 days you will have a much better recall on all types of problems than if you did 3 days of 10 similar problems each day.

Interleaving: how to space practice to improve memory

This is called interleaving and is a scientifically proven method to help the human brain remember things longer. If you only have 3 days, then do the problems out of order, exponent, then geometry, then algebra, then go back to exponent. And leave a little bit of time in between solving sets if you can.  The idea is to get your brain to forget a little bit so that it has to work harder to remember it. This exercises your brain and builds the neural pathways so you will remember the information longer. 

Everyone’s brain is different and has a different time interval that will make it easier or harder to learn things. Experiment with different time intervals, you want to have forgotten enough to make retrieval challenging, but not impossible. Once you have figured out your ideal time interval you build a study schedule around that.

Check out our next article: How to use flash cards