If you’ve ever been to a concert, I bet the songs you enjoyed the most were the songs you already knew.
In fact, I also bet you even made an effort to listen to those songs before going to the concert.
It’s perfectly normal. We all do it.
But why?
Why make an effort to go somewhere to listen to something you’ve already heard?
The reason is because you need time to absorb new stuff. You need time to mentally process it, to digest it, to take it in.
Exactly the same thing applies to the topics you cover at school. If you can familiarise yourself with the topic of a lesson before the lesson, you’ll be able to mentally process it much better.
How do you find out what you’ll be doing next lesson?
If you’re following a course book, just skip forward a few pages (but be careful, your teacher might not be covering every chapter). If you’re not following a course book, try asking. The fact you’re showing interest in the lessons is usually enough for your teacher to let you know what’s coming next.
Once you’ve found out what the next lesson is about, use your skills at searching the web to find something that will explains it to you before the lesson.
By taking a few minutes to go over what you’re going to be doing before the class means you’ll get it quicker, so you can spend less time having to concentrate and more time pretending that this is sooo easy and that you’re sooo intelligent.
It means that even with the usual classroom distractions of gossip, humour and rivalry, you can still come out on top and look cool.
So find out what the next lesson is about, do some research before the class and discover for yourself how a bit of preparation helps you learn stuff better.
Tip 4: Find out what’s coming up in the next class and do a bit of research to be one step ahead of everyone else.