TIPS MAKING AN EFFECTIVE STUDY TIMETABLING

The most important aspect of making a timetable is being able to balance the time you have to all the topics that need to be mastered before exams. To do this, you must first establish the time you have for personal studies to prepare for exams before the exam date. Exclude the time teachers spend in class and sleep time.

Also establish the number of topics you have to cover before exam time. The best way to go about this is using your syllabus. Assuming that a form four student takes the following subjects; Mathematics; English, Kiswahili, Biology, Chemistry, Physics and Geography, it means he is roughly preparing for 220 topics.

Then divide the time you have before the exam with all the topics you have to cover before sitting for that exam to establish a rough estimate of how much to you should study daily in order to complete the syllabus. After which, you make a time table, in which you have time for every subject as well as time for classes, rest, and other daily activities. Remember you should not study 2 topics of same subject in one day, instead, select one topic from each subject for every day. You may increase the number of topic per day; it depending on what your calculation tells you to do so as to complete the subject in time.

• Make your timetable in a manner that makes best use of your time. Schedule high-value work like studying your most challenging and/ or demanding subjects during your peak time where you are more active, alert or generally feeling fresh, and save routine and low-energy work like updating notes, doing assignments or tackling your easy, most loved or subjects that need less concentration for times after a long day or when you are not very alert.
• • Plan one hour of study time for each hour of class time. Remember that learning is what counts, not the time it takes you to learn. Accord enough time to a topic until you are in control of its content.
• • Establish definite but regular daily study hours you can stick to so as not to lose control of your time, keep abreast with your learning tasks and benefit from the fact those regular study sessions are more effective for learning material than a single long “cram” session.
• • Schedule your study periods in a manner that allows you to review a chapter before the teacher covers it; so that when he/ she tackles it in class, it is your second exposure to the content which makes it easy for you to understand it easily or make clarifications on some issues you had while handling it on your own.
• • Your timetable should have time where you review what you learnt in class that day in an effort to condense the information in your mind and clarify the content further while it is still fresh for ease of recall.
• • Balance your activities. Allow free time for breaks, friends, sports and other leisure activities in your timetable. Your breaks should be between 5 – 10 minutes for every 40-50 minutes of study time.
• • Keep your timetable flexible, realistic and practical to allow time for unexpected events and make it possible for you to follow it honestly.
• • Use your syllabus and school routine to inform your time table and how to plan the free time you got. Do not plan to be studying something when you truly know that a teacher will be in class at that particular time. Should you do this, you might end up not studying some subjects.

• Create a focused timetable; instead, of having Chemistry in your timetable, have solving chemical equations or extraction

of chlorine to ensure that you to track how your progress as you prepare for exams and ensure that no topic is left behind, consciously or by mistake.

• Cross out items you have already tackled on your timetable from a copy of the syllabus you have written as you finish them. Doing this will give you a sense of accomplishment, as well as help you see easily what you still have left to do.

• If you have small amounts of time for study, use the limited study time for high priority subjects, topics and content or consider using the limited time for studying but using a question from a past paper. Since you might not be able to study the whole of Mitosis within 15 minutes, find a question on the same, answer it while using your notes. Doing so accelerates understanding and practical use of the knowledge.

• Ensure you set aside practical time for each study session. Most top students have realized that short study sessions are beneficial than long ones which give room for many distractions. Also bearing in mind that most students can only concentrate for a short time i.e. their age plus five, scheduling your study sessions between 30 – 45 minutes gives better results than having an hour long study session. This timing can be extended to an hour if the activities are varied e.g. serious 30 minutes study, then 5 minutes to reflect on what you have studied, 10 minutes to summarize it, 10 minutes to answer a question on the same and 5 minutes for a controlled break where you can mark or confirm whether you answered the question correctly.

• After each study session, have a controlled break where you allow your mind to store the information you have learnt, the way you would like to remember it. Do not start singing or shouting immediately after serious studies as this is likely to impair how you will remember that information, instead, have a calm break where for the first five minutes, stretch as you reflect on what you have just studied before getting into the other phase of active break where you allowed to do whatever you may wish.

Don’t have a redundant timetable, change it every two weeks so that you take care of the other materials not included in the first timetable to show progress and take care of the things you did not cover fully.

• After starting to use your study timetable, check how well it works, look for the things you might have left out, the timings that might not be working for you in a sense that you leave much work undone or finish tasks earlier than planned to ensure the timetable just works for you. Keep whatever is working and change those things on the timetable that are not working so that you still cover all the content you set out to.

• The most important aspect of making a timetable is being able to follow it, therefore stick it at a visible place as a constant reminder and try as much as possible to follow through it. Remember that in beginning you may find it a little hard to follow your time table but if you follow it for a week then you will like to follow it forever.

• Reward yourself for using your study time effectively, for example after an efficient study session, watch TV or play your favorite sport for a few minutes.