Now you should be armed with a list of study strategies that meet your learning style needs.  You've just finished reviewing the things that can impact your study habits.  It's time to develop your personal study plan. This is a general plan that you can use to prepare for tests, especially the big ones like the midterm and the final.  It's also a place to begin to organize yourself for long-term assignments like research papers, book reports or presentations.

Start by examining your schedule.  You laid out your typical schedule back in section 4-1.  How does it measure up with your needs for studying?  Standard wisdom is that you should plan to spend at least one hour out of class for every hour you spend in class for a typical college program.  For high school, the timing is likely to be approximately fifteen to thirty minutes for each hour in class, and for middle school, ten to twenty minutes.  Of course, these numbers do not include time to work on actual assignments from class that will be turned in.  This is time spent on less immediate classroom needs, like reviewing notes and organizing material.  In other words, plan to do your homework AND spend that much additional time on learning the material.  Build that much study time into your schedule with flexibility to add more when needed for upcoming tests or large projects.

Make sure your study time is divided up or chunked into fifteen to thirty minute pieces.  If the study period is longer than thirty minutes, plan for breaks (and no, breaks don't count as study time!).  Plan to complete an array of activities during each study period, instead of trying to force yourself to read for hours on end.

How will you motivate yourself to meet your goals and keep up with the work?  What sorts of rewards could you offer yourself as stepping stones to those great grades that we know are at the top of your list?   

Finally, look at your list of personal study strategies that you developed in the last section.  Make sure you have the supplies on hand to complete those activities that you'd like to use, such as index cards to make flash cards or poster board to create a poster.  You might also need markers, colored pencils, paper, a recorder, or other equipment.