There are few things more frustrating than spending hours creating a study guide for your students, only to have half of them ignore it until the night before the test. Or worse, having a student ask, “What’s going to be on the test?” when you’ve spent the last three weeks teaching them exactly what’s going to be on the test.
I used to spend time putting together study guides, too. But eventually, I realized that I was creating something I had already created when I planned my curriculum. My learning targets were my study guide. I just needed to organize them in a way that made sense to my students.
Once I figured that out, I stopped creating traditional study guides for every unit. Instead, I started giving students a unit map at the beginning of each unit that told them what we were learning, when we were learning it, and what they needed to know before the test. And as a bonus, it made my classroom run a whole lot more smoothly.
Start With Your Learning Targets
When you’re planning a unit, you should already have a list of learning targets that describe what students need to know and be able to do by the end of the unit. If you’re teaching chemical and physical properties, for example, your learning targets might include distinguishing between chemical and physical properties, identifying examples of chemical and physical changes, and explaining the evidence that a chemical reaction has occurred.
These aren’t just statements to write on the board because your administration wants to see them. (Although, yes, they check that box, too.) They’re a checklist of everything your students should be able to demonstrate by the end of the unit.
And if your assessments are aligned with your learning targets, that checklist is essentially a study guide. Think about it: if a student can successfully demonstrate every learning target you’ve taught throughout the unit, shouldn’t they be prepared for the test? That’s the whole idea.
You’re writing these things on the board to satisfy admin. They’re in your lesson plans. Now just hand them over to your students in an organized way. Boom! You have a study guide.
A Study Guide Is NOT a Practice Test
This is where I think we sometimes confuse two different resources. A practice test isn’t a study guide. It’s a test. It gives students an opportunity to practice answering questions that look like the ones they’ll encounter on an assessment, but it doesn’t necessarily tell them what they need to study.
The exception is when you’re using a practice test diagnostically. If students take a practice test first, identify which concepts or skills they missed, and then use those results to determine what they need to review. The practice test has helped produce a study guide.
I especially like doing this before a cumulative final exam. I actually offer a set of four chemistry final exams, and one way teachers can use them is to give one exam as a diagnostic. Instead of telling every student to go home and “study chemistry” (super helpful), their results can point them toward the specific units and learning targets they need to revisit. The remaining exams can then be used for additional practice or the actual final.
For regular unit tests, though, I don’t think students need another giant packet of questions masquerading as a study guide. They need a clear list of what they’re responsible for knowing and doing. We’re talking about 5-10 days of content in my class. I’m not creating an additional test for that.
Turn Your Learning Targets Into Unit Maps
Instead of handing students a traditional study guide a few days before a test, I gave them a unit map at the beginning of each unit. Mine included lesson titles, learning targets, vocabulary, assignments, and important dates. I organized everything chronologically so they could follow along as we went.
The most important part was that every learning target corresponded with something students needed to know for their assessment. That meant the unit map served two purposes: during the unit, it showed students what we were learning and where we were going. Before the test, it became their study guide. And I didn’t have to create another document per se. I just organized what I already had, (my unit plan) in an easy to understand format for my students. Here’s what it looked like:
Teach Students How to Actually Use It
Of course, handing students a list of learning targets doesn’t automatically mean they know how to study. That’s a skill we have to teach them.
Students can go through the learning targets one at a time and ask themselves whether they can actually demonstrate each skill without looking at their notes. If the target says, “I can distinguish between chemical and physical properties,” can they explain the difference? Identify examples? Answer a practice question independently? If yes, move on. If not, that’s what they need to study.
Because my lessons were numbered and organized around those learning targets, students could then find exactly what they needed. If they were struggling with something from Lesson 7.3, they could return to their Lesson 7.3 guided notes, practice problems, or resources in Google Classroom instead of flipping through 40 pages of notes trying to figure out what might be important. Before I taught all of my lessons on Youtube myself, I would curate videos that students could watch that correpsonded with each of my numbered lessons. It was a lot of work, but once I got my collection, it was an excellent library for my students.
Grab My Chemistry Learning Targets
If you like this idea but don’t particularly want to sit down and write learning targets for an entire year of chemistry, I’ve already done that part for you. (*Insert hair flip*) You’re welcome! You can grab my Full Year of Chemistry Study Guides for free. I’ve broken down the possible learning targets by unit, and they’re completely editable so you can add, remove, or change targets to match what you actually teach in your classroom. Use one unit at a time as you move through the year, give them to students at the beginning of each unit, or combine them into one big study guide when it’s time to prepare for a cumulative final exam.
This Is How I Organize My Chemistry Curriculum, Too
This same system is built into the way I organize my Chemistry Curriculum. I wanted the lessons, learning targets, guided notes, practice assignments, and assessments to work together rather than feeling like a collection of random resources covering roughly the same topic.
Whether you’re using one of my individual chemistry units or the full-year curriculum, students can connect a learning target to the lesson where they learned it and the practice that goes with it. A student struggling with dimensional analysis doesn’t need to review everything they’ve learned about measurement. They can identify that learning target, revisit the corresponding lesson, and practice that specific skill.
It’s a much more targeted approach to studying, and from the teacher’s perspective, you aren’t scrambling to assemble a brand-new study guide every time an assessment rolls around. You’re making better use of the resources you’ve already prepared.
A Study Guide Shouldn’t Be Another Thing on Your To-Do List
I still believe in review games, practice problems, and practice tests. Those give students opportunities to practice the material. But your study guide serves a different purpose: it tells students what they need to know. When your learning targets align with your lessons and assessments, you’ve already created that list. Organize it, give it to your students, and teach them how to use it.
They know what’s expected of them. They can identify what they’ve mastered and what still needs work. And you don’t have to spend your Sunday afternoon making another review packet. That’s a win for everybody.
