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Planning your study
Planning your study
There is a huge range of ways that you can plan your study from monthly to weekly to daily timetables, priority lists and checklists. All of this is good but don't get overwhelmed trying for perfect planning. We aim for 'good enough' planning which is straightforward to put in place, gives you an idea of what you need to do and lets you get on with it.
Studying for the Junior Cert or Leaving Cert is hard. Studying how the circulatory system works for Science on a Tuesday evening at 7pm is much less daunting.
The two most useful planning aids you can use are:
Weekly study timetable. This lets you know when you should be studying and when you should be off doing something else (without feeling guilty).
Subject planner. This gives an overview of what is needed in a particular subject.
Making a Study Timetable
Making a Study Timetable
Studying for your Leaving Cert is a horrible, icky task. It's hard to know where to start and most people will start finding much more important things to do like clean the room.
However, studying maths for 40 minutes on Monday at 6pm is something that you can do.
Making a study timetable is one of the most important things you can do to help you study effectively.The basic idea is pretty simple:
Block out the time you're doing extracurricular activities like soccer practice or piano lessons.
Block out the times you really don't want to study.
Pick the times you will study
Select what subjects you will study in each time slot.
Printable Study Timetable Templates
Printable Study Timetable Templates
Click each template to download a printable PDF version.
Samples of Timetables from our Students
Samples of Timetables from our Students
This is not the only way to make a timetable, here's an alternative method that one of our students created.
Online Study Timetable Templates - School Week
Online Study Timetable Templates - School Week
To help you make your study timetable we've created several templates using Google Sheets. The more complex ones will help you add up the number of study sessions that you have planned for each subject. Click on the links below to create your own copy of the templates in your Google Account. You can use your St Colmcille's email (or any gmail account) account for this.
Basic
Basic
Just a simple table that you can fill in.
We use this with 1st and 2nd Year students.
Junior
Junior
This template can add up your study sessions over the week per subject. Fill in your subjects in the pink boxes on the right and then choose what goes where using the drop down boxes.
The subjects are set up for Junior Cert and we use this with our 3rd Years.
Senior
Senior
This planner also adds up your study sessions over the week and is set up for Leaving Cert Subjects. It also has pages to create a subject planner for each subject.
We use this with our 5th and 6th Years.
Ok, I've made my timetable but how do I find it again?
Ok, I've made my timetable but how do I find it again?
Your version of the timetable is stored in your Google Drive account. Click on the button to the right to go there
Making a Subject Planner
Making a Subject Planner
The next useful thing you can make is a subject planner. It contains a list of all the topics in that subject so that you have some idea of what's done and what needs to be done. Your teacher may provide this list, in some subjects the chapters in the textbook work well or in other subjects you can use the topics that appear on exam questions.
The planner we use allows students to rate the difficulty of the topic so they know which ones might need further revision and then record whether they have made notes and tried exam questions on that topic.
This planner is a new addition to our study programme and is currently being tested with 2nd Year students. If any others would like to download a copy click here. We print 5 double sided sheets and bound them as an A5 booklet that can be stored in the student journal.
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