Flashcards are great tools for memorizing terms and learning new concepts. By creating flashcard webs, you can take your understanding the test material to a new level.
Difficulty: Easy
Time Required: 30 minutes
Here's How:
- Create flashcards and use them to study your test terms, as you normally would.
- Once you've memorized the flashcards, go back through your notes and your textbook to come up with a few themes or categories you've covered in the class. You can use subtitles from your textbook or divide your material by date or subject.
- Divide your flashcards into piles according to the related subjects. For example, you might put "Abe Lincoln" under a "Civil War" pile and "Fifteenth Amendment" under a "Reconstruction" stack.
- You will find that some of the flashcard terms will fit into a few different piles. Assign a color to each subject, then use a colored marker to indicate on the corner of a card any second or third category that it fits into.
- Using a stack of related cards, create a flashcard web by arranging the related terms on your poster board, dry erase board, or even your wall (but don't draw lines on your wall!). This web will be a visible depiction of a possible test question.
- Draw lines between the cards to show important relationships (solid line for strong and dotted line for indirect).
- Now that you've created a web, stand back and examine the relationships. Try to come up with an essay question that would incorporate all of the terms in your web.
- Make a new web for every stack of related cards. Don't forget that you will use some of your terms in a few different webs.
Tips:
- The flashcard web is an example of active studying that engages tactile and visual learning styles. The more you interact with test material, the more information you will retain.
- Try to predict test questions based on word relationships. You should be able to come up with a few test questions for each web that you create.
- Even though you may not be able to predict and create a web for your teacher's exact test questions, you will develop a deeper understanding of how one term relates to another. These relationships will be important for answering any test question.
What You Need
- Flashcards
- Several colored markers or crayons
- Tape
- Large dry erase board, giant sticky notes, or poster board
