In the seventh grade Student Learning Skills class, students have the opportunity to sharpen skills that allow them to be better-prepared students. We touch on a range of issues from the more basic, such as organizing a locker or binder, to the more complicated, such as organizing a study guide for an upcoming test. Over the years, many resources have been culled and used by teachers to enable their students to create and reach goals.
One resource that can be modified depending on the level and skills of each student is The Essay Machine (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1y2OKvHBW9fZ_UBui9a3LOEDJtXKw4TqLXP2hdprfVGo/preview). Contrary to what it sounds like, this is not a website that will create an essay for the student. Instead, it breaks down the general format of every essay and allows space for the student to write.
Another excellent resource for teachers and parents alike is http://www.doe.virginia.gov/instruction/graduation/project_graduation/online_tutorials/english/materials/reading_middleschool.pdf. This article is replete with exercises that strengthen skills such as pre-reading, predicting, inferring, questioning and summarizing. It also contains test-taking strategies and helpful hints for research projects.
Finally, teachers, parents and students may often wonder why certain study habits are better than others, and the following article sets out to answer this question https://imageserv7.team-logic.com/mediaLibrary/15/Research_On_What_Type_Of_Study_Techniques_Work_Best.pdf. This article goes through ten commonly-used study habits and classifies them as either low, moderate or high-utility strategies. The authors also note how various factors may impact the given strategy. These factors include: learning conditions, type of student, learning materials, ways of measuring student learning and implementational issues.
These are simply three of many useful websites that can be found on the Internet. While they may be well hidden beneath virtual piles of Facebook messages and Youtube videos, such resources are valuable to anyone trying to enable a student to reach his/her fullest potential. 