The Importance of Giving Students Study Guides

Many of our nation’s adults believe that our education system is designed to make students fail.   This conclusion came about from having experienced shocking instances of being told to prepare for specific content only to open the test pages to questions from a different set of content.  Many persons may say that students must always be prepared because it was “clearly stated in the syllabus.”  The reality however is that just as the Caribbean Examination Council prepares students with study guides, the students should be given the same for their internal ones.

Internal examinations and tests should not be intimidating and feared, but should be seen as a good challenge and confirm students’ levels of understanding of content and concepts.  Our students should never be felt punished but encouraged to demonstrate depth of knowledge.  Here are some steps schools can make to ensure equity and fairness for students:

1.      Assess the students’ competency levels in the subjects of their choice.

2.      Place the students according to their levels of ability so that they can feel a sense of equity among themselves.

3.      Within the departments, plan and strategize how to share information and skills according to levels of abilities.  Make the teachers revise/improve in their use of structures, strategies and techniques to promote the proper of information transfer.

4.      Organize the appropriate assessment tools that will be used to accurately measure the students.

5.      Provide study guides for the various subjects that students will be assessed on.

6.      Administer a mini-mock test/exam to create a sense of awareness of the structure of the paper/assessment and make changes where necessary.

7.      After marking, give a good informal feedback session with the students.  Let them know their areas of weakness.   This can also help teachers determine if they had not transferred the information properly thus helping teachers to review and improve on their teaching strategies.

It should never be that our students see school as a hostile place to learn.  Adults have told their stories have been told of bitter school experiences and emotionally shared them with their children.  According to Marzano, et-al (1997),  our students come to school with attitudes and perceptions of how school should be and when negative ideas are conceptualised, these will be rejected or confirmed depending on their experiences at the school.  “Every child can learn, every child must learn” is the constant phrase used when published reports of students failing hit the air-waves.  For the quoted phrase to become a reality then it is suggested that our educators use the steps laid out to use as a guide to remedy their school’s issues.

Even though we are a country with limited educational resources, let us provide a healthy productive learning environment for our students (Green, Henrequez-Green, 2005).  Let us guide our students towards a more user-friendly education system for all to live work and be properly educated.