How to become an excellent student. How to be an excellent student without much effort

Many people ask how become an excellent student at school, educational institution or in life. After all, in order to achieve success in life, you need to be an excellent student in life, and in order to get a diploma and a good education, you need to become an excellent student. But the main thing is to decide whether this training is related to your life goal, whether you want to be a simple, highly paid employee or an employer.

In this article you will learn how become an excellent student at school, in the classroom, but first decide for yourself whether you want to work for someone or whether you want them to work for you. These are two paths that diverge very much and it is impossible to move towards two given paths at the same time. Being an excellent student is actually simple; below in the article you will learn how to do it.

Study after class time

To become an excellent student in class or school, study after school, hire tutors, or study on your own. The Internet has made it possible to independently search for the necessary information; there are also books and training courses. Today, if you really want to, you can learn any language in the world within a month. Therefore, write down those subjects in which you have low grades and start improving your results with tutors.

read books

Raise your hand

To be the top student in your class, you don't have to be afraid to raise your hand. Often those who teach do not raise their hand and receive a bad grade, and those who do not teach simply have courage. Therefore, immediately after the teacher’s question, if you know the right answer, raise your hand, the teacher will appreciate it and will give you a higher score.

Give up bad habits

To become an excellent student at school or in life, you need to get rid of bad habits, stop smoking, drinking, overeating, as this negatively affects the functioning of the brain and you simply will not be able to notice the information you need. Those children who smoked and drank alcohol studied poorly, but when they stopped doing this, they began to improve their results. Therefore, lead a healthy and correct lifestyle, play sports, study, read books and you can become an excellent student.

Learn to communicate with teachers

Show a strong desire to learn and develop

To become an excellent student at school , in the classroom and in life, you just need to show a strong and passionate desire to learn and acquire new knowledge, get better grades. Once you have that desire, set a goal for yourself to get the specific grades you want in the subjects you want. Make a plan for achieving this goal and get to work. Do not waste time on entertainment and temporary pleasures, as they take away life and bring neither benefit nor joy.

The main sign of talent is when a person knows what he wants.

(Petr Leonidovich Kapitsa)

A talented person is talented in all areas.

(Lion Feuchtwanger)

In this chapter we will talk about talent. After all, according to our research, it ranks second among the factors that shape an excellent student.

But what is talent?

Let's look again at the encyclopedic dictionary and find out that this word comes from the measure of weight “talent”, which was also the name of the gold coin. And it was a lot of money. Anyone who had talent was considered a fabulous rich man. In the New Testament there is a parable about three slaves to whom their master gave them according to their talent. One buried his talent in the ground (hence the popular expression), the second exchanged his talent, and the third multiplied it. Since biblical times, the word “talent” has been used in a figurative sense: as a gift from God, an opportunity to create that should not be neglected, “buried in the ground.”

Our contemporaries use the word “talent” in precisely this figurative meaning. Dictionaries define talent as “certain abilities and skills inherent at birth that are revealed with the acquisition of skill and experience.”

Talents, as it turns out, are different. Personally, I like the theory of talent, which was created in the first half of the twentieth century by our compatriots, psychologists Boris Teplov, Vladimir Nebylitsyn and V.S. Merlin.

Teplov stated back in the thirties of the last century that There are no untalented people. However, talent can manifest itself at different ages, or it may not awaken at all until the end of a person’s life. Here's an example: a person has the innate makings of an outstanding violinist, but neither he himself nor his parents know about it. The violin does not appear in his hands in time. And instead of going on tour, delighting the whole world with his art, he dies of a heart attack at the age of fifty as the technical director of a bankrupt enterprise. Isn't it a shame?

The same can be said about seventy percent of people: their talent was not discovered. Hence the crises of forty years, widespread drunkenness, broken families, suicide attempts - all because talent was not awakened in time and the mechanisms of personality realization were launched in the wrong direction.

Writer Lion Feuchtwanger believed that a talented person is talented in everything. This is not entirely accurate. In the mid-twentieth century, Teplov's students and followers, V.D. Nebylitsyn and V.S. Merlin, made the following very important discovery: they identified seven main species congenital talent, which made up the so-called seven-sided crystal. Here are the types of talents they noted:

1) musical and artistic;

2) literary;

3) artistic;

4) pedagogical;

5) entrepreneurial;

6) managerial, also known as organizational;

7) and – attention! – educational.

The last type of talent interests us most. But first, let's talk about all seven facets. And here we must say about another important discovery of Nebylitsyn and Merlin; they declare that every person has at least four out of seven talents, while a certain part of people has a predominance of one type of talent.

Psychologists have found that musical and artistic talent is the most common; every second person on the planet possesses it. Every second person on the planet can sing, dance or play a musical instrument well, or draw quite well. (Contrary to this theory, in Soviet times, not all children were accepted into music and art schools, but only those who passed the exam.) This group also includes people who have a literary gift, the ability to put their own thoughts into written form, and visual images translate into words. Indeed, on the Internet portals Prose. RU. and Poems. Ru registered a huge number of amateur poets and prose writers. Eduard Uspensky once noted that in Russia there are two hundred million poets out of one hundred and fifty million citizens. When asked how this was possible, he explained: in our country, every second poet also writes under a pseudonym.

But other talents are much less common. Ten percent of people shine with artistic talent. There are slightly more teachers by vocation - fifteen percent. There are eleven entrepreneurs. Yes, yes, only eleven out of a hundred people succeed in business, prosper, get rich and emerge from any global crisis. The rest either vegetate, or sell their business to more talented people, or even go to the bottom.

The fewest number of managers is four percent. So good managers have always been and will be in short supply. Of course, there are always a lot of bosses, where would we be without them, but there are only four talented ones out of a hundred.

Ninety percent of people have academic talent; in other words, all mentally competent individuals. We all learned to walk, talk, use household items, communicate... And it was our educational talent that helped us with this.

Now we have reached the seventh talent, educational. Scientists claim that Ninety percent of people have academic talent(or, more simply put, all mentally competent individuals), this was not news to me personally. After all, at one time we all learned to walk, talk, use household items, communicate and much more. And it was our educational talent that helped us all with this.

I know a lot of adults who learn something all the time. And they do it with pleasure. Their teaching talent works with them twenty-four hours a day.

I would like to tell you about my uncle. His name is Igor. So, my uncle, as long as I knew him, was constantly learning something. Returning from the army back in 1976, he taught himself to play the guitar. A year later he was accepted into a well-known ensemble in our city. A couple of years later, a decree came out: persons who did not have a musical education (at least at a music school) were prohibited from earning money by performing concerts and touring the country. Then many popular groups went underground, for example “Aquarium”. My uncle Igor also had to give up what he loved and urgently learn a new profession.

He completed driver courses and became a city bus driver. Then he began working as a personal driver. The nineties struck, and the era of entrepreneurship began. But my uncle didn’t become an entrepreneur; he didn’t have any initial capital. He continued to work as a driver, driving a woman who was setting up a fishing business in my city. Noticing that my uncle was a very smart man, she involved him in business, and soon he became the technical director of the entire fish production. And he had to urgently learn fishing and refrigeration. And then also to the construction industry, to build retail chain stores throughout the Chuvash Republic. At fifty, he bought tons of books and mastered complex computer programs related to design and construction. Now he is a top-class specialist with a high salary. And without any diploma, but thanks to my educational talent and ability to learn independently. And he set the grades for this study himself, or rather, his employer, in the form of wages.

Academic talent can manifest itself and work fully at any age. Each of us at any moment in our lives can use our educational talent - if we don’t let it sleep, we constantly keep it in full combat readiness.

Another friend of mine, let’s call him Viktor Ivanovich, graduated from flight school with honors and managed to work in the civil aviation service. But even then the most serious employers were hunting for excellent students. And Viktor Ivanovich was offered to work not just anywhere, but in the State Security Committee of the USSR. He had to learn the profession of intelligence officer. When a market economy replaced socialism, an experienced specialist was offered a new job - to fight economic crimes. He had to master two more specialties - economist and lawyer. Viktor Ivanovich graduated in absentia from two more universities and received two more diplomas, honors, of course. It is not surprising that when Viktor Ivanovich retired from military service, he was invited to work at Sberbank of Russia, where he still works as a big boss, providing his family with high prosperity.

I know many such stories about excellent students who are excellent students at any age. All of them confirm the idea of ​​psychologists that academic talent can work fully at any age. That is, each of us can use our educational talent at any time in our lives. But only if it doesn’t let him sleep, constantly keeps him in full combat readiness.

Now let's remember Teplov's third thesis: talent can lie dormant in a person and even sleep until the end of his life.

That's why not everyone in school is an excellent student!

Those students who go to school but are not excellent students simply did not awaken their academic talent at the right time, did not stir it up and did not work with it to its full potential. And you shouldn’t deceive yourself, saying that not everyone can be an excellent student; studying is hard work. Yes, studying is hard work. But it will cease to be so if you turn work into pleasure. And pleasure can only be obtained from an activity to which talent is applied.

Children who do not study to their full potential and do not become excellent students often hear from their parents, who also did not become excellent students:

- Oh, we wish we were your age! If we returned to our desks, we would only get A's!

And the parents are absolutely right. From the height of life experience, they subconsciously understand that they need to study in their own time, and not put off studying for the future.

Almost everyone can study well. To do this, you need to awaken your academic talent and make it work in full force. If you apply talent to your studies, it will no longer be perceived as hard work and will become a real pleasure.

Let's simulate the situation, as psychologists advise. Imagine a boy, Vova, who has to get up at seven in the morning on Sunday to go on a hike with his class. The kind mother took pity on Vova and let him sleep. He, of course, slept well, but he’s not very happy about it. The class has gone on an interesting trip, and the guys can’t catch up!

In the same way, academic talent can sleep through anything. Only those who do not sleep will go far ahead, and it will be impossible to keep up with them. It’s just like in sports: if you fall behind at the start, you won’t catch up until the finish line. What conclusion does this suggest? Very simple. You can't let your teaching talent sleep. You can't let your academic talent get lazy. And then everything will work out.

I will give you a short guide, one might say step-by-step instructions for awakening your teaching talent. You can make it work at any age, in any class, in any course.

Alarm clock for learning talent

You have already taken the first step. After all, you are holding this book in your hands, you have a desire to become an excellent student. And the first step, as they say, is the most important. What's next?

We need to awaken talent. Careful and gentle so as not to scare. If you yell over a sleeping person’s ear: “Get up, get up!!!”, he will, of course, wake up. But for sure after such a wake-up call he will feel sick and broken. It's the same with talent. We need to act here gradually. The process can take from several months to a year or even more. But psychologists say that the most boring activity will become interesting if you turn it into a game. You have the opportunity to play with yourself. What? Use your imagination.

So, it all starts with setting two goals.

The maximum goal is to become an excellent student.

The minimum task is to become an excellent student in basic and favorite subjects.

This is the minimum task we need to start with. It is solved in several moves.

Launching educational talent into first gear. You need to start with one or two subjects in which the situation is most favorable, there are fours or even fives. These are the bastions that need to be stormed first (we use this terminology if we play war). Your task is to become a real, one hundred percent excellent student in these subjects. This is the most important stage. You will prove to yourself that excellent academic performance is entirely possible. And your academic talent will receive vitamins for its growth in the form of A's. If we talk about school, this phase may take one or two academic quarters.

Switching to second speed. Add two or three more to the first two items. Throw all your strength at them, not forgetting, of course, the positions taken in the first phase. They cannot be handed over. On the one hand, it will be difficult, but, on the other hand, you already have a positive experience, and excitement will definitely be added to it. Getting straight A's is like big business. There can never be too many of them. I want more and more. Then comes a turning point when it is no longer possible to retreat back, life without A’s will become unthinkable.

Your talent has already awakened and worked at full capacity. And now he will work for you for the rest of your life.

It's time to rush to storm the remaining fortresses.

Switch to maximum. We move on to fulfilling the maximum task. And first we need to decide on a strategy.

In any war one must look for allies. In this case, your best allies are your parents. They definitely need to tell them about their decision and ask for help. At least moral help, we talked about this in the chapter “Parent is the head coach of an excellent student.” In second place are teachers. The best way to gain their support is to talk about your desire to become an excellent student in their subject, we also talked about this above. Be sure to conduct all negotiations in person, one on one, finding a convenient moment for this.

Then we need to provide support from the rear. C-grade friends pose a particular danger in the rear. There is no need to tell them about your desire to become an excellent student. Let them not guess anything. Otherwise, most likely, they will make every effort to distract you from your studies and take you into the world of entertainment, pampering and computer games. Beware of such friends. They are like saboteurs in your rear. The best way to strengthen your rear is to find an excellent friend, but we will talk about this in more detail in one of the following chapters.

In the meantime, let's formulate the first and main rule of an excellent student.

To become an excellent student and remain one until the end, use all your abilities and talents and, first of all, use your academic talent to the fullest. Remember that all people have learning abilities.

Chapter two

Start your studies with A's

To succeed, students need to catch up with those who are ahead and not wait for those who are behind.

(Aristotle)

Whoever had time, ate it!

(Children's saying)

Whoever gets up early, God gives him.

(Proverb)

What is this assessment? The question seems to be simple. But it’s not easy to answer.

Firstly, this is a mark in the school register, diary, student record book or examination sheet; a number from two to five or a verbal symbol: excellent, good, satisfactory, unsatisfactory.

Secondly, assessment is an indicator of the knowledge, skills and abilities acquired in an educational institution and the effort expended on them.

Thirdly, this is what people go to study for.

Someone may object: they study for the sake of knowledge, and not for the sake of grades. Some even argue that grades are the main evil in the entire education system and they should be abolished. By the way, this is what they did in Swedish schools. There are no twos or fives. The Swedes are happy, the whole world is jealous of them. But we do not live in Sweden, but in Russia, and no one has canceled our assessment system. And if so, it means that we study for the sake of grades.

Studying is work, and excellent study is hard work. And the price for it is assessment. For schoolchildren and students, grades are the same as money for adults. And, by the way, there is such a pattern: the higher the grades were during study, the higher the salary level later. Excellent students are accustomed to receiving high rewards for their work and do everything to ensure that their salaries are high. And nine times out of ten they succeed. They are excellent students! And those who put up with C grades at school or college subsequently agree to a small, modest salary.

If you have already decided to be an excellent student and are holding this book in your hands, achieve A's, do not settle for less. And in adult life too. And don’t dream about the times when the assessment system will be abolished, don’t expect mercy from nature. You have to earn everything yourself. Excellent grades too.

And it's actually a little easier than you think.

The secret that excellent students know

When a quarter, half-year comes to an end, or another academic year ends, the most important time for paying salaries begins. That is, not salaries, I made a reservation, but quarterly, semi-annual, annual and final grades. Oh, and this is a difficult thing!

There are almost thirty people in each class, and everyone needs to be graded. What does it consist of? Of course, from the ratings that have already been given. Accounting begins. The scores are added up, divided, and the average is displayed. Moreover, it is necessary to take into account the different “weight” of assessments. After all, they are also different. An A for a test is two or even three times more valuable than an A for working in a group or for active work in class during a front-line survey. The score for the oral answer and report also has a very high weight. For the message she is more modest. For an essay downloaded from the Internet, it’s completely illusory. In general, taking the arithmetic average is not the main method for summing up results; there are many other criteria.

Grading is a responsible, painstaking and serious job. However, it is precisely this most important stage of teaching activity that teachers always lack time for. There are also mistakes, especially when a student has a vinaigrette of grades. This is where the tears, persuasion and various tricks begin. Some people aim for an A, others a B, and for others even a C seems like unattainable happiness. And then scandals with parents begin (see the chapter “Scandalous Mom, Nervous Dad”). Oh, this is not an easy matter!

For an excellent student, a low grade is a kind of challenge to a duel. And it is corrected in the very next lesson or blocked by a whole doublet of fives, so that it is simply not visible in the mass of good grades.

But grading excellent students is easy and pleasant. Everything is so simple with them! Five or six fives are in a row in the magazine, occasionally among them there are fours, very rarely threes. But they don’t solve the problem, because in eight out of ten cases the bad grades have already been corrected or improved. Excellent students are also people; they rarely have breakdowns and failures. Threes and even twos. But for any excellent student, a low grade is a challenge to a duel. And he never refuses this challenge. A bad grade is corrected in the next lesson or blocked by a whole doublet of A’s, so that it is simply not visible in the mass of good grades.

How many grades have I given over a decade and a half of work? Thousands!

And all these years I have been observing the same pattern. Excellent students receive their A's, as a rule, in the first half of the quarter or half of the year. They can't wait to show off themselves and their knowledge.

How does this usually happen?

The teacher, when checking homework, always asks the same question: “Anyone willing to answer?” The one who raises his hand and goes to the board. Every excellent student uses this unwritten rule. He comes to the board in the first days and weeks of the term. And accumulates A's. By the middle of the quarter, he already has a solid reserve of grades and he can no longer stretch his hand, but prepare more carefully for tests and tests, for tests and exams.

The excellent student volunteers to answer himself and tries to earn his A's in the first days and weeks of the quarter. By the middle of the quarter, he already has a solid reserve of grades, and he is almost guaranteed an excellent final grade.

The non-excellent student does exactly the opposite. He's in no hurry. It seems to him that he has plenty of time, that everything is still ahead and that he can always make up for everything. In the meantime, it’s better to go about your pleasant activities and entertainment. But time passes unexpectedly quickly, and the column with ratings is empty. The teacher, seeing this, calls him to the board. But the lesson was poorly prepared! Because yesterday was the birthday of my best friend, mother, grandmother or aunt and there was no time for homework, because I had to prepare a festive dinner, and then everyone had fun, and then I had to clear the table and wash the dishes. And here it is, three in the journal and diary. It's good if it's not a deuce. And then the fight goes on for the top four, or even the top three.

The chances of becoming an excellent student with this approach are zero.

Everything is like in sports. The runner also gathers all his strength at the very beginning of the race in order to get ahead and, when all rivals are left behind, to calmly and with dignity reach the finish line. And here they are, the podium and the gold medal.

In studies, the distance, as already mentioned, is marathon. But it is also divided into stages, separated by vacations. For example, a quarter lasts two months. This means that in the first three weeks, maximum four, you need to accumulate A’s. The more there are, the better. This almost guarantees a final excellent grade. In general, where it should be. If we are talking about half a year, then you need to save up the A's for the first two months. In the remaining months, you can receive them slowly and without much stress. Things will move on their own, by inertia. The same applies to the whole year. There are four quarters in a year, the first three should be graded as five, and then it won’t be too difficult to get an “excellent” in the end.

Here are the best tactics for an excellent student. The first month of the quarter is hard work to get excellent grades. A month of relative relaxation and rest. Excellent grades at the beginning of each quarter eventually add up to an A on the school certificate.

In general, this is the tactic. You work hard for a month and get excellent grades. You relax for a month and watch how others strain, barely getting modest fours and threes. And so on all year. And at the end of the school year, four A's in quarters easily add up to one big annual A'. And over the years it turns into an A in the school certificate.

Based on all of the above, we can easily formulate the second rule of an excellent student.

To be an excellent student, manage your time correctly. Start in the first days and weeks of school. Accumulate excellent grades, the more the better. Correct bad grades in the next lesson. Remember, a high rating today means your high salary tomorrow.

Chapter Three

Closer to knowledge

At a lecture at the university, a tired professor wipes his pince-nez:

- Quiet, gentlemen students! If the front rows were at least half as noisy as the middle rows, the back rows could sleep peacefully.

(Joke)

About ten years ago I made a discovery that stunned me.

This happened at the next teachers' meeting. All the front seats were occupied by women, the middle ones too, and a few men had to be content with the seats in the back. I don’t remember what issues were on the agenda. Yes, I don’t remember anything at all what happened at this teachers’ meeting! I remember that the geography teacher and I discussed the football match that had taken place the day before, then we looked at an article in the newspaper, told each other a couple of recent jokes, talked to those who were sitting in front of us, then he began to examine his wallet, and I, a little bored, I started drawing little devils in my students’ notebooks.

We both had no time for what was going on at the teachers' meeting. And not only for us, but also for all twelve teachers who sat in the back and penultimate desks. The director kept making comments to us and urging us not to be distracted.

But we were distracted.

- And you’re not ashamed? – the director, a kind-hearted man, was indignant. – After all, this is what you scold your students for!

We sighed, agreed, quieted down for a while, but after a few minutes we began to get distracted again, and the audience became noisy.

Literally a day later I was sent to a law teacher course. But the telephone message indicated the wrong time, and I arrived a little late. All the front and even middle seats were already taken, and I had to sit at the back desk again. And behind her was already sitting my classmate from the history department, Volodya, who also worked as a teacher. We haven’t seen each other for six months, since in the winter we sat together on the jury at the city Law Olympiad, and, naturally, we were very happy with each other. We had so much to tell each other!

Very soon they also began to make comments to us. And the courses were very interesting and informative. The material provided by the lawyers who came from Moscow was very valuable and useful. It is not surprising that our chatter caused justified indignation among our colleagues.

“Something is wrong here,” I noticed during the break.

“Yes,” agreed Volodya. – Something’s not right. Not a working one! Maybe the weather is to blame? Too warm and sunny.

The courses took place in mid-May, and it was really warm and sunny outside. But I didn't agree:

- The weather has nothing to do with it. It's all the back desk's fault! There's some magic here. Haven't you noticed that all the laggards sit in the back rows?

Volodya agreed with me. We thought about it. What to do? They tried to change places with other teachers, but none of them agreed to go to “Kamchatka”. Then we decided to take a desperate step: we took and carried our back desk forward in our hands, placing it right in front of the lecturer’s nose, right next to the pulpit.

And the evil magic immediately lost its power. The working mood returned as if by magic. Volodya and I listened to the entire course with great attention, were never distracted, constantly and actively participated in dialogues with teachers, and passed all tests and exams brilliantly. I still use the knowledge gained at these ten-day courses in May. And I came to the next teachers’ meeting earlier than the others. I sat on the first desk and was not distracted. And everything also went more than successfully.

It is impossible to study well while sitting in Kamchatka. This audience area is not called that for nothing! Knowledge simply does not reach there. They don't reach. This is the terrible reality! You can become an excellent student by taking only first place in your class.

After these two incidents, I started thinking. I began to remember all my rich experiences of school life. Has it ever happened that an excellent student sat at the back desk? And I couldn't remember a single case. Just think! Twenty-five years at school, five years at the university - and not a single excellent student at the back. Even the second to last one. Even for the penultimate one! It was then that I realized that it was impossible to study well while sitting in Kamchatka. Knowledge simply does not reach there. They don't reach. This is the terrible reality!

But one assumption was not enough for me, and I decided on a very dangerous and risky experiment. I asked the impeccable excellent student Vasya A. from the tenth math class to move to the back desk for a month. When he, surprised, asked me why this was necessary, I honestly told him everything about my assumption and my desire to carry out a scientific experiment. Vasya A. will probably become a scientist in the future, because he immediately agreed to participate in an unusual pedagogical experiment. He had to change places with Arthur A., ​​a very weak student. He was extremely surprised, but, being a kind and pliable boy, he agreed.

So Vasya A. ended up in Kamchatka. I began to watch him carefully. He was an excellent eight-year-old student, a winner of Olympiads and All-Russian competitions. It wasn't easy to break it. And yet, I noticed, after two weeks he became slightly absent-minded and overly talkative in my lessons. I deliberately did not reprimand him and did not call him to the board. Then he suddenly called. Vasily answered an order of magnitude worse than before. And he also wrote the written work with a B.

My assumption was confirmed. The insidious effect of “Kamchatka” began to take effect. Every day the excellent student received less and less knowledge. A little more - and “Kamchatka” would have crossed him off the golden list of excellent students. But he himself came up to me:

“I can’t do it anymore, Dmitry Yuryevich,” he admitted, “a little more and I’ll swing down.” You were absolutely right. It is simply impossible to study well at the back desk. Some kind of witchcraft! May I interrupt the experiment?

I myself was already worried about Vasya and told him to urgently return to his place.

But then another problem suddenly arose. Arthur A. began to study better in three weeks of sitting at the first desk. And all the teachers noticed this except me: I watched Vasily so closely that I somehow didn’t think about Arthur. I didn’t even notice that during this time he answered quite decently orally twice, and wrote the written test with an A with a minus, which had never happened to him. So, I received another confirmation of my theory.

Having learned that he was being returned to the back desk, now Arthur also begged:

– Dmitry Yuryevich, I don’t want to go back! I like to sit at the first desk. It's more interesting here! My parents began to praise me.

What was to be done? Don't rearrange the desks... Fortunately, Vasya's neighbor in the first desk, Yana M. (of course, an excellent student) won the All-Russian competition and went to study in the USA for a whole year. Her place on the first desk was taken by Arthur A. And what would you think? The hopeless C student, to the complete surprise of his teachers and parents, graduated from the eleventh grade without a single C grade! He scored eighty-four points on the Unified State Examination in mathematics and successfully entered the university.

To this day, when he meets me on the street, he remembers:

– Dmitry Yuryevich, remember how you moved me to the first desk?

- I remember. What desk do you sit on at university?

- Of course, on the first! Only on the first one. Not even the second one. I don’t give up this place to anyone. Once they even offered me money for it. But I'm not a fool!

- I'm glad for you, Arthur. How are your studies going?

- I'm an excellent student. I want to get a red diploma. I have no doubt at all: he will get it. It's never too late to become an excellent student.

So, the experiment completely confirmed my assumptions: You can become an excellent student by taking only first place in the class.

At the beginning of this book, I already said that studying is very similar to a running race. And again I want to repeat myself. To be a leader, you must be a leader in everything. Even in a classroom. The closer you are to the board and the teacher, the closer you are to knowledge, and therefore to good grades.

You have to be a leader in everything. Even in a classroom. The closer you are to the board and the teacher, the closer you are to knowledge, and therefore to good grades.

Teachers know about this. Especially in elementary schools, this is often used: in order to catch up with those who are lagging behind, they are placed in the front rows. And the smartest teachers change places for the kids from time to time so that no one stays behind. There are also insidious teachers who, if they really want to put a good student in grades, send him to “Kamchatka”. Her evil power acts quickly: he was good - and he is not good. Excellent students, of course, are not sent away. They are treasured. They are valuable material. They are always seated forward.

Parents know about the power of “Kamchatka”. Many mothers dream of their first-graders sitting at the first desk, even asking teachers about it. Unfortunately, in the lower grades, students are usually seated according to height or vision. So I advise their mothers not to be shy and insist that the child be moved closer to the board. You can lie that he doesn’t see well. Some people do this.

And why are there desks and rows in the classroom? Some people think it would be better without them. Although for its time it was a progressive system.

It was invented by the great Czech teacher and educator of the seventeenth century, Jan Amos Comenius. The modern education system owes him a lot. He came up with the idea of ​​dividing children of the same age into classes, began teaching boys and girls together, and introduced teacher specialization by subject. He invented lessons and even recess! It was Comenius who was the first to arrange the desks in three rows and one after another. Compared to medieval church schools, where rote learning and corporal punishment reigned and where children sat anywhere, this was the greatest progress. Now, of course, better schemes have appeared.

If anything, I try to change the classroom layout regularly and have my students rearrange their desks. Sometimes we make desks into five squares and sit at them in groups. Sometimes we build one large round table, like the knights of King Arthur. Sometimes the desks are arranged in a large “P” shape, reminiscent of a wedding table. In general, we’re making it up. The main thing here is different. Do you know what puzzled faces there are on those who are used to sleeping or having fun at the back desks! Their usual student life has been destroyed, and this is so unusual! There is no one to hide behind from the teacher; your comrades and classmates see what you are doing. Willy-nilly you have to get involved in work.

It’s a pity that “Kamchatka” cannot be completely destroyed yet. But you can more often drag those lagging behind to the front desks. And something will remain in their head.

And for excellent students, we can formulate a third rule.

Do you want to be an excellent student, study well and get good results? Always sit in the front, no further than the third row. And it's best to choose the first row.

Chapter Four

Uniform for excellent student

They meet you by their clothes, they see them off by their intelligence.

(Proverb)

The law teacher is the second person in the school after the psychologist to whom children complain about life. What and who are they complaining about? Let's try to figure it out.

Third place - strict teachers. Children tell the most nightmarish stories about how they are tormented by mathematicians, physicists, Russian language teachers, geographers and other evil monsters. Well, that's understandable. And who hasn't gone through this? Many adults then dream about these tormentors all their lives, they wake up in horror and in a cold sweat and then cannot sleep for a long time. Children's writer Elena Usacheva even wrote a book, “The Ghost of Ivan the Terrible,” about how teachers at one school drank blood from children at night and abused them in every possible way. But still, teachers are not the main school nightmare. And on Last Bell Day they are deservedly given large bouquets of flowers.

In second place, oddly enough, are parents. They get more complaints than strict teachers. Some on mom, some on dad, some on both at once. And someone else has a strict grandmother or a stern grandfather. Don’t feed them all bread, let them ban something. What? Whatever! Be friends with “this boy” or “this girl” - most often. Approach the computer unless it is related to lessons. Go to parties with friends. Walk late at night. And many many others. If parents had their way, they would probably chain their children to desks!

But the first place is not occupied by parents. What children complain about most is... school uniforms! Over the past twelve years I have heard a chorus of complaints about being forced to wear it. Everyone, even excellent students, complains about this.

Meanwhile, it never even occurred to us, children who lived and studied in Soviet schools, that it could be otherwise. Everyone had to wear a school uniform - both boys and girls. Only in August of ninety-one (I was then working as a counselor at the Chaika pioneer camp) children were allowed not to wear pioneer ties. It was an unimaginable event! And literally a week later the Soviet Union collapsed. All you have to do is take off the red ties...

When I started working at school in 1993, there was no longer any trace of a school uniform. Few of the kids wore their uniforms, probably left over from their older brothers or sisters. The rest were motley and bright, like a gypsy camp or the Zaporozhye Sich. Don't believe me? Look at the film magazine “Yeralash”, issues filmed in the nineties. Jeans, sneakers, leggings, T-shirts, leather jackets, studs... I admit, I even liked it. Clothes reflected personality. Each student could be characterized at first glance. And it was so new, so democratic! This is not the Soviet way. Later it became clear that all this freedom, of course, was not the educational policy of the state. Along with the Soviet Union, light industry and government subsidies for goods for children disappeared. They simply stopped producing school uniforms. So the children were allowed to dress in whatever their rebellious child’s soul desired.

When life slowly began to get better, they returned to school uniforms at the request of parents and the teaching community. And then a new headache began. Children, parents, teachers and school administrators. Judge for yourself. It's easy to say: school uniform! Where can I get it? And most importantly, what should it be like?

An excellent student is the same soldier at a combat post. And the soldier must be... that's right, in uniform. In school uniform. For an excellent student, this is the law. An excellent student cannot do without a uniform or a business suit.

The process of choosing a school uniform is not at all simple. It takes place in several stages. First, the school-wide parent meeting, by a majority vote, decides on the introduction of school uniforms. Then some mother from the parent committee comes up with a proposal to discuss the draft of the future school uniform. For the next six hours of the meeting, parents vigorously discuss color, cut, details, ties, jackets, and choose a company that can quickly and cheaply sew six hundred (or even more) sets of the approved sample. Here passions run high, like in a Mexican TV series. I witnessed a three-day debate on the issue of school uniforms! Sixteen designs were reviewed and rejected. A famous female fashion designer in the city fainted twice and then defiantly left the hall. The mothers looked after her and decided that they could handle it themselves. When I looked at the approved sample, I was quite surprised. It was very similar to the country's most popular school uniform set, maroon with vest and tie. Was it worth breaking spears? Men don't understand this...

And now you can finally admire the result. First of September. All children came to school in uniform. Everything is as in the picture. The eyes of parents, teachers, directors, and representatives of the city (or rural) administration who arrived for the Knowledge Day holiday rejoice. Everyone is happy.

All? Children don't like to wear school uniforms. Especially high school students. What they don’t do to avoid wearing a uniform! They don't do anything. They don’t wear it - that’s all. And nothing will get through them.

No matter how much the teachers persuade the children, there will still be five or six people in the class who stubbornly do not wear a school uniform. And looking at them, others stop wearing uniforms. Which teacher would like such freedom?

Any mother knows how difficult it is to get a modern girl or boy to wear what mom needs, and not what the girl or boy wants. What is it like for teachers? However, if students are not dressed in uniform, the city administration will get the school director, the head teachers will get it from the director, and the teachers will get it from them. But no matter how much the teachers persuade the children, there will still be five or six people in the class who stubbornly do not wear their uniform. And looking at them, others stop wearing uniforms. And everything goes in circles again - until the next time the teacher gets stuck.

When persuasion does not help, repression begins. Sometimes they take funny forms.

I knew one newly appointed headmistress who decided to restore order at the school and force the children to wear a uniform. The director who came before her worked with violators individually: he invited them to his office and taught them for a long time. The new director launched a large-scale operation against the violators. At first, gloomy head teachers came to lessons and signed up those who came without a uniform. This was the first attack, a psychic one. The younger children and the middle management quickly gave up; on the third day, the high school students, who had weak nerves, also began to wear uniforms. But those who were strong in spirit retained their former independent appearance.

A second blow followed. During the big break, the high school students were gathered in one half of the gym. Then the director with a face blacker than a cloud invited those in uniform to go to the other half of the hall. Those who were without uniform remained in the minority. They huddled close to each other and tried to hide their awkwardness and fear with bravado. They were all recorded again and dismissed. The next day, the moral execution procedure was repeated. And so on for a whole week. The bunch of violators was melting every day. But it didn’t disappear at all. There were heroes who decided, apparently, to die, but not to put on their uniform.

Don't really kill stubborn people! The pedagogical fervor has dried up, and they gave up on them. And you yourself understand that if there are at least three people left who violate the norm, then the rest are in danger of the same trouble. It's like rust.

Here's the story. You may ask why I told it? To ask the question: Do you think there were any high achievers among these free spirit heroes?

Of course no. An excellent student is the same soldier at a combat post. And the soldier must be... that's right, in uniform. In school uniform. For an excellent student, this is the law.

An excellent student cannot do without a uniform or a business suit.

His school suit performs several functions:

1. Disciplines, sets you up for work. Same as the first batch.

2. The student’s uniform serves as an identification mark for the teacher. A neat student or student is always a candidate for excellent students.

3. Business attire makes student and teacher equal. After all, a teacher, due to his position, is also obliged to wear a formal suit, that is, in the same uniform. So wearing a school uniform is showing solidarity with the teacher. And this is always appreciated by teachers.

Those who ignore the school uniform or business attire at school usually have a big problem getting good grades. The reasons may be different.

Older teachers, most of them conservatives, see their demonstrative refusal of school uniforms as a challenge to the school community and to themselves personally. And the more fashionably dressed the student is, the greater the challenge. This means that the attitude towards him is more strict, and there are more requirements. And it will be more difficult for him to get excellent grades. My mother-in-law, who worked at school for forty years, states bluntly: “I will never give a good grade to someone who doesn’t look the part!” And these are not empty words. And some girls don’t understand why people pick on them and don’t give them good grades. It doesn’t occur to them that the culprit is excessive cosmetics, bright clothes, and numerous jewelry.

Those who ignore the school uniform or business attire at school usually have a big problem getting good grades. The reasons may be different, but the result is the same: there are no non-formal excellent students.

If old teachers perceive a dressed-up fashionista as a challenge to the system, then young teachers perceive it as a personal challenge. And this is even more dangerous. "Competition! – the young beautiful teacher subconsciously notes. “I won’t tolerate it!” And the result is a drop in academic performance.

I randomly interviewed ten teachers of varying ages. All of them confirmed that the student’s appearance matters to them. In the greatest danger, of course, are the informals. Dressing as a goth or a punk and coming to school in such an outfit is the same as writing on your forehead: “I don’t know anything. Give me two at once!” There are no non-formal excellent students.

So if you decide to be an excellent student, then you have only one choice - in favor of the form. It is better to forget about informal clothing and informal communities, at least at school. After all, you have already made a choice in favor of the group called “excellent students.”

Hence the fourth rule of an excellent student:

If you want to be an excellent student, study well and get good results, always take care of your appearance and always be in excellent student shape.

Chapter Five

First - lessons

Student to teacher:

– Should someone be punished for something they didn’t do?

- No, of course, under no circumstances!

- Fine. I didn't do my homework...

(School joke)

You should always come to class prepared, that is, with your homework completed. The idea is not new, everyone knows about it very well. However, when you start questioning students, each time it turns out that a third of the class is not ready to answer, and another third is only half ready. Two or three students come fully prepared for the lesson. It’s not hard to guess: these are excellent students. But you don’t have to ask them anymore, everyone has enough A’s to give the final grade, because they follow rule number two.

Meanwhile, there are students in the class who managed to not receive a single grade by the end of the quarter. They didn’t raise their hands in class, didn’t take part in work, and missed tests and tests. You call them to answer. The result is negative, to the surprise of both parties. The teacher is surprised how it is possible not to prepare a lesson without having a single grade. And the student is surprised that he was called to the board. Is it really impossible to do without this?

Alas, it has always been this way, it is so and it will be so. Most children do not complete their homework in full. Why?

The first reason, of course, is banal - laziness. Many people don't want to work. We have already talked about how to deal with it.

The second reason is that students are overloaded with homework. In some subjects, homework is very large, no one can argue with that. Seeing the amount of work, the guys simply give up and raise the white flag. We'll discuss how to deal with this shortly.

The third reason is the behavior of parents. In elementary school, some parents not only do not teach their children to prepare homework, but, on the contrary, wean them off it. And now we’ll talk about this in more detail.

Personally, I have never had problems with homework. From the first grade, I did my homework completely independently and coped with everything quite well. But this is not about me. I had a friend, a neighbor girl Alenka. Very pretty, curly and fair-haired, with dimples on her cheeks, four years younger than me. We spent a lot of time together, playing.

She has arrived and it’s time for her to go to school. One September day, having quickly completed my homework for the fourth grade and had dinner in a warm family circle, I ran to the neighbors. And then, to my complete amazement, it turned out that Alenka could not play because she was doing her homework. I was asked to wait. Realizing what kind of lessons she had just started, I decided to wait a long time. And I was not mistaken.

Parents make a big mistake by depriving their children of the opportunity to learn independently. Homework is aimed specifically at independent work. Schoolchildren must prepare them themselves from the first grade.

A real performance was going on in Alenka’s house. The girl’s grandfather, a war veteran and former sailor, together with his first-grader granddaughter, stormed the curriculum. A tall, wiry old man circled over his little granddaughter like a vulture over a dying horse. He watched her every movement, every squiggle, circle, letter and number. Alenka was very tense and, naturally, often made mistakes. They infuriated the old man. He screamed and cursed like a boatswain on a pirate ship, and forced his granddaughter to redo and rewrite everything. Slaps on the head were common. It’s not surprising that Alenka took a long time to do math, Russian for even longer, but reading was simply a problem. I had never seen anything like it before.

And this continued day after day throughout first grade. And the whole second one. In the third year of study, the grandfather slowed down, and in the fourth or fifth he got tired of everything and, having not achieved any positive results, gave up on his granddaughter. As a result of this home pedagogy, Alenka became a banal C student. She graduated from school with difficulty, did not study further anywhere, got married once, got divorced, and then left for America altogether.

A similar story happened to my cousin. Only her mother did her homework with her. In the same spirit as Alenka’s grandfather. Day after day, from first grade to third. Sometimes dad intervened in the process, he made even louder noise. The result was the same. When my daughter was either in the fourth or fifth grade, my mother gave up. And my daughter finally slipped into grades and stuck it out until her senior year. She received higher education for free. Somehow, dad got his daughter to work for him. She did not make any career there.

What happened? Maybe girls were stupid by nature? Nonsense! It’s just that they were taught to study and work independently in the first grade. And this is the main mistake of many parents.

How to learn to study

This part of the book was written specifically for parents of primary school children. It is worth reading not only for current parents, but also for future ones.

It's understandable why parents of first-graders are so worried about their homework. They instinctively feel that if they miss something now, they will have to suffer for the rest of the eleven years. But what exactly should not be missed?

First of all, you need to build a system for preparing homework. And to do this you need to know the answers to the following questions:

1. How much time should you spend preparing your homework?

2. How to organize home activities? What tasks should I do first?

3. How to support a child’s positive emotional mood?

4. Do I need to help children with their homework?

5. What to do if you realize that you can’t cope?

I will answer on all five points.

1. Time to prepare homework

The optimal time for preparing homework, taking into account the child’s psychophysiology: in 1st grade – approximately 45 minutes; in 2nd grade – 1 hour; in 3rd grade – 1.5 hours; in grades 6–8 – 2–2.5 hours; in grades 9–11 – 3 hours.

2. How to organize classes at home

First of all, it is necessary to provide the child with working conditions. He should have a workplace that is familiar to him - with a comfortable table and drawers for the necessary supplies. The daily routine should include the same time for doing homework. All this helps you get ready for work faster.

Teach your child, even before starting work, to review what is assigned for today and tomorrow, to prepare his workplace and all the necessary supplies.

For a month or two, observe how a first grader starts work and how quickly he gets tired. If he easily gets involved in work, but gets tired quickly, advise him to start homework with difficult tasks. If he finds it difficult to swing, but then picks up the pace of work, it is better to start with easy lessons.

3. Positive emotional attitude when preparing lessons at home

It is very important that your child develops and maintains a positive attitude towards homework.

From the very first days, you need to make him understand that lessons are an important matter, no less important than work for adults. Make it a rule: you cannot distract your student from lessons with household chores or, worse, entertainment. Family gatherings can wait until homework is done.

At the same time, try to avoid intrusive monitoring. When returning from work or, conversely, when picking up a child from school, you should not start a conversation with him by asking him about his lessons. There are many other forms of greeting. Don't stand over him while he's doing his homework.

The greatest mistake is to use homework as a punishment for misbehavior. Under no circumstances should you gloat about the mistakes you have found in your child’s work; you should not remind him of past mistakes and blunders, or frighten him with upcoming exams.

Try to develop a positive attitude in your child towards learning difficulties. Show that they are completely surmountable, rejoice with him even in his smallest victories. Then in the future he will easily overcome them.

4. Help in preparing lessons

A schoolchild who is independent in his studies is the dream of any parent. But a child who is constantly monitored is unlikely to become independent. Remember my girlfriend?

You can't go to the other extreme. Of course, you need to monitor how the tasks are completed, but sometimes you also need to help the child. Nothing bad will happen if you do some of the monotonous work for him, freeing up his time for mental activity. If you see that your child is completely tired, you can even do the rest of the task for him, let him just copy it into a notebook.

The main help a child receives from parents is not control or doing homework for him. The parents’ task is to teach him to work independently, to awaken interest in learning, and to give him confidence in his abilities.

If you look at the matter from this point of view, it becomes not so important that the homework is completed without a single blot or mistake. It is much more important that the child understands the material and masters the scheme for doing the work.

It is not so important that homework is completed without a single blot or mistake. It is much more important that the child understands the material and learns the scheme for doing the work: preparation, execution, independent control of what has been done.

For example, you need to teach your child to check his assignments for mistakes. Even kids should check their work. Don't try to immediately correct every mistake your child makes when helping him with his homework. You can ask him to stop so that he himself notices and corrects it. However, don't let it accumulate uncorrected errors. It is desirable that by middle school self-testing should become a habit for the child, and a high school student should already be as independent as possible in preparing homework.

It is better to teach a first-grader independence in several stages.

First stage. The parent does most of the tasks together with the child. At this stage, you need to understand what knowledge or skills the child lacks and try to fill the gaps.

Second phase. The first grader does part of the work himself. You must be confident that he can handle this part of the job. Praise him for his victories. In case of failure, you need to calmly figure out what the reason is.

Let your child learn to ask for help if he finds it difficult, there is no shame in it.

At this stage, the child will understand that he can work independently and cope with difficulties. The share of independent work will gradually increase.

Third stage. The child works on his own, his parents are nearby and support him psychologically. They monitor the progress of work and are ready to help at any time. What has been done still needs to be checked.

Fourth stage. The first grader works completely independently. He knows perfectly well how long it will take to complete a particular task, because he can use the clock like an adult. Parents may be out of the house or doing their own thing in the next room. They only check the completed task - this must be done until the student finally develops the skill of independent work.

Someone will say that teaching a child according to this scheme is difficult, that it will take a lot of time and effort. And I will say that it is better to spend time and energy at the start than to drag a child in tow for ten years of school, and then five years at the institute.

5. If studying is not a joy for parents and children

If you followed all the points in our scheme, then you should not have this problem. But in life anything happens. It happens that both parents and children cannot withstand the load. Screams, tears, and even punches begin. There is no time for excellent studies here. What to do? Stay. Change the usual order of things.

Doing homework for a child is the most important task, no less important than work for adults. Adults do not have the right to interrupt a student from lessons with household chores. Fun and family celebrations will have to wait if homework isn't done.

Arrange for additional daily lessons with a tutor. Depending on the situation, this role can be played by the class teacher, a high school neighbor, a student at a pedagogical university, a retired teacher, or one of the relatives. The main thing is for parents and the child to calm down and for classes to continue.

If you can't find someone to help you, just stop working together for a while. Nothing will happen in these few days. Just warn the class teacher that you are conducting an experiment, training the child’s independence and that he needs some leniency these days. Soon mutual dissatisfaction will subside and you will be able to get back to common work.

And here’s another important piece of advice for overly emotional parents: reconsider your attitude towards your child’s school grades. Don't take them as an assessment of your own parenting successes or failures. We talk a lot about A's in this book. But, in the end, we don’t need A’s at any cost, but knowledge. If you teach your child the process of acquiring new knowledge, A's will certainly appear.

Golden twenty-four hours of a high school student

The conversation with parents, current and future, is over. Now I turn to those who have long been able to prepare their own lessons. To high school students.

They face completely different problems, and the main one is the huge amount of work that needs to be done at home. How to deal with it?

But we will start with other questions. Why do you need to prepare homework at all? Maybe you can do without them?

There is also such a point of view in pedagogy: all work should be done at school. That's what school is for, to study in it. But at home you need to live and relax. By the way, Jan Amos Komensky, the same one who invented lessons, breaks and the arrangement of desks in the school classroom, did not give children homework. He believed that this was unreasonable, because classes at home could not be full-fledged. Some teachers and public and political figures return to this thought of his. There are persistent rumors that there are countries where homework is not assigned, either in Sweden or in the Netherlands. So these are rumors. Yes, in these countries they almost never assign homework, but only in the lower grades and because children stay to work at school after school.

Today, any successful person needs to have information. He must keep in his head a volume of knowledge that is tens of times greater than that which was necessary for the inhabitants of the early twentieth century.

High school students everywhere and always have independent homework. After all, preparing homework makes it possible to consolidate the knowledge gained in class, helps to develop perseverance, efficiency, discipline, and a responsible attitude to learning. Completing such tasks broadens your horizons and develops the ability to work independently.

There is another strong argument in favor of homework: A twenty-first century student needs to master a huge amount of knowledge.

Today, any successful person needs to have information. He must keep in mind the amount of knowledge tens of times exceeding that which was necessary for residents even at the beginning of the twentieth century. This is how the law of accelerating history works: each subsequent stage of the development of society takes less time than the previous one. And the closer we get to modern times, the more the spiral of historical time contracts, the faster technology develops, the more dynamically society changes.

Each subsequent social formation is 3–4 times shorter than the previous one! Can you imagine how fast the information flow is condensing? See for yourself. The history of mankind, from Cro-Magnon man to modern man, totals only 1600 generations (if we assume that each new generation appears after 25 years). And this is what happens:

1200 generations of people lived in caves;

240 generations knew writing;

22 generations – printed books;

The 5th generation lives under electric lighting.

Cars, radio, airplanes and cinema began to enter our lives just 100 years ago, television has been around for 60 years, computers for less than 50 years.

New technologies are being introduced into the everyday lives of billions of people, changing their quality of life, social and labor relations, the culture of society, and the entire economic structure. What was considered the greatest discovery yesterday is now used everywhere. And these changes are happening faster and faster. 1000 years passed from the invention of paper to the appearance of printed books. Steam engines became widely used in production 80 years after their invention, telephones - 50 years later, airplanes and wave transmitters - 20 years later, transistor technology - three years later, lasers - six months later.

Scientists have calculated that today the flow of information doubles every 20 months. How to deal with it? How not to fall behind, how to remain competent for many years, and therefore a sought-after specialist?

Only with the help of the latest methods of self-study and self-education. I want to introduce you to one of these methods. It's called "Golden Day".

“Golden Day” method

This method is based on the latest scientific research into the mechanisms of human memory. I'll tell you a little more about them so that you can understand how the method works.

Today we know that there are several levels in the structure of human memory: instantaneous, short-term, long-term and operative memory.

First, information from the senses, mainly hearing and vision, enters instant memory. It stays there for about a second and a half. If information attracts a person’s attention, it is transferred to short-term memory. At this level, the brain processes information and selects what should be transferred to long-term memory, that is, stored for a long time. The volume of human long-term memory today is considered to be practically unlimited.

Short-term memory has several features that are important to know about.

First. Its volume is limited. Therefore, new information in short-term memory constantly replaces old information. Scientific experiments have shown that a person is able to retain only 5–9 pieces of information in short-term memory at a time. What it is? A unit of information is a letter, number, image, or even a phrase, something that is perceived by us as having a single meaning. Here are examples of units of information: “Nicholas II is the last emperor of the Russian Empire,” or “father is father,” or “twice two is four.”

To be sure to remember the necessary information, the information will have to be repeated three times. For the first time - immediately after receipt. The second time - within the next hour. And the third time - within 24 hours, but not earlier than 10 hours from the moment of the first acquaintance.

Second. In short-term memory, information is stored for a short time - about 20 seconds, and then quickly replaced. How to keep her? To do this, you need to bring long-term memory to the rescue - concentrate, repeat information, analyze taking into account what you have already known for a long time. If you do this work over the next hour, the information you receive will be stored in long-term memory.

But long-term memory also loses information if we don’t use it. In order to finally consolidate information in memory, you need to do one more round of memorization, namely, transfer information from long-term memory to intermediate or operational memory. In other words, repeat it again. Information will be retained in RAM for about a day. During sleep, the brain will analyze the contents of RAM and store the most important things in long-term memory. This time for a long time.

Does all this seem very difficult to you? Let's look at it with an example.

You received ten or twenty pieces of information in the lesson. It must be repeated within ten minutes so that it does not disappear. Pull yourself together, concentrate on this information, study it carefully.

The second time, the same information must be repeated again within forty or fifty minutes. The lesson had just ended. Do not regret a couple of minutes from the change, they will return to you a hundredfold. Repeat the information a second time, thereby transferring it into working memory. Here it will be stored for a day from the moment of first acquaintance.

If you repeat the same information a third time within these twenty-four hours, it will remain in your memory for the rest of your life. Because it will be fixed in long-term memory. This must be done no earlier than 10–12 hours and no later than 24 hours from the moment of receiving the information.

This is the golden day of an excellent student.

As you can see, everything is very simple. Using this method, you will save a lot of precious time and avoid grueling cramming, which is of little use. Everything is forgotten anyway, because the twenty-four hour principle is not observed, unless it works by accident. But the “Golden Day” method works not only when preparing lessons, but also when preparing for exams, tests, tests. Therefore, it is incredibly valuable and useful for both schoolchildren and students.

And we formulate the fifth rule of an excellent student.

Always come to class with your homework completed. Lessons are in first, second and third place. Everything else comes later! If the load increases, pull yourself together, concentrate, and turn on creative thinking. Use the Golden Day method. Invent your own preparation methods. Remember that cramming is the enemy of an excellent student!

Chapter Six

Use a magic wand

Books are a tool for imparting wisdom.

(Jan Amos Comenius)

This chapter will again focus on textbooks and how to work with them. Therefore, I advise you to go back to chapter five, where we talked about textbooks, and re-read it again.

Have you reread it? Very good. Now we can continue.

You already know two important rules for working with information:

1. To learn new information, it must be repeated at least three times.

2. Three repetitions should be spaced out over time. The first repetition is immediately after receiving information in order to concentrate your attention on the new information. Then you need to return to her within an hour. And again - within a day.

By adhering to these simple rules, you will more easily remember what you read or hear and take notes. Your school work will be even more effective if you learn to apply these rules when working with textbooks.

Dear high school students and students, I see how you looked longingly at your textbooks. A whole mountain of volumes! And each has three hundred pages, and all text! If only you could read these bricks once, you think, why not read them three times...

But there is a way out!

Now I will give you a secret method for working with textbooks. It's incredibly simple, but its effectiveness is amazing. Your efficiency, that is, the speed of reading and assimilation of educational material, will increase five times! And you only need one tool. Very simple and cheap. Pencil.

In ancient times, books were read by underlining the text and making notes in the margins. Now only doctors and candidates of science remember this. That's why they amaze us with their knowledge.

So you too, arm yourself with a pencil before you begin to storm the textbook. And make your notes in it. By the way, it is better to use a pencil rather than a pen, so you can make corrections if you did something wrong.

The main secret is what kind of notes need to be made.

The effectiveness of working with a textbook will increase significantly if you mark up the text you are working with. Emphasize the most important information - terms, definitions, conclusions, examples. Mark in the margins exactly what you need to pay attention to.

First. Needs to be emphasized in the text all the most important things:

a) terms, concepts and their definitions;

b) signs and characteristic features that reveal the essence of terms and concepts;

c) conclusions and examples.

If the author of the textbook did not highlight the main points, your magic pencil should do the job. To make it easier for you to navigate later, use different types of underlining - straight lines, dotted, wavy.

Second. Need to be designated in the margins of the page, what exactly is noted.

Icons in the margins further decipher what was emphasized in the text. Definition? Concept? Signs? Character traits? Examples? Conclusions? Come up with these icons yourself; they can be words, abbreviations, letters, or any symbols.

That's all. Why try so hard, you ask? And then, so that you can immediately see all the most important and necessary things. Now, whenever you open your textbook - even in a day, even in a year - you will always quickly get the essence out of it. It will take you at most one and a half to two minutes to recall the most important thing in your memory. And your school textbook will turn from an enemy into your greatest friend and helper.

Now it’s time to formulate the sixth rule of an excellent student.

To gain good knowledge, make friends with the textbook. Re-read the next paragraph at least three times a day. And be sure to mark up the text you are studying.

Chapter Seven

Make friends with excellent students!

Tell me who your friend is and I will tell you who you are.

(Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra)

Folly and wisdom are caught as easily as contagious diseases. Therefore, choose your comrades. The eyes of friendship are rarely wrong.

(Voltaire)

There is a strong belief among students all over the world that excellent students cannot be friends. This is one of the most common myths about excellent students: they are closed to their studies, selfish and generally lonely people. This is the myth I want to debunk.

But first, let's define what true friendship is. Let's look again at the encyclopedic dictionary:

Friendship is a selfless relationship between people based on trust, sincerity, mutual sympathy, common interests and hobbies. Mandatory signs of friendship are mutual respect for the friend's opinion, trust and tolerance. People connected by friendship are called friends.

The authoritative journal Modern Psychology, based on statistical research, assures that friendship is one of the main priorities for most people. Along with a beloved and well-paid job, family and good health. That's probably true. It’s not for nothing that the word “friendship” is typed even more often in the search engines Yandex and Google than “happiness.”

People have always understood the value of true friendship. The ancient Roman playwright Plautus remarked back in the third century BC: “Your wealth is where your friends are!” Here in Russia they say the same thing: “Don’t have a hundred rubles, but have a hundred friends.” There is a very similar Greek saying that friends should be few but true. By the way, the sayings of many other nations also note: in friendship it is not quantity that is important, but quality.

Excellent students, as we know, are very demanding people. First of all, in relation to yourself. They never settle for the worst, for less. Does this mean that they should be just as demanding of their friends? Can excellent students be friends? With whom? And how is this friendship born?

In my years of teaching, I have known many excellent students who were surrounded by true friends because they were great friends themselves. And any teacher will tell you the same. But teachers and lecturers are rarely asked about such things. So rumors about single excellent students are born and live on. I think they are picked up by those who have not managed to become an excellent student or at least make friends with one of them. Why couldn't they become friends? Not at all because all excellent students are incredibly selfish and proud.

Sympathy is not friendship. Friendship is based on mutual interests of people. The more common interests you have, the more sympathy there is between you, the more likely your relationship will develop into a real, strong friendship.

Very often, friendship is called a relationship between people based simply on personal sympathies. But friendship is based not only on sympathy, but also on common interests and goals. The simplest example. Let's say you have a cat, dog or parrot at home. You are dating a stranger, if you just like each other, most likely there will be a meaningless conversation between you. But suddenly your interlocutor mentions that he has a cat, or a dog, or a parrot at home and he adores his pet. At this very moment the conversation will become lively. Because sympathy based on common interest can already develop into friendship.

A common interest can be anything - a favorite artist, writer, composer, music, books. The more common interests there are, the more sympathy there is between people, the more likely they are to become true friends.

What is a true friend like? This is how the American writer Ernie Zelinsky characterizes it in his book “Success without Office Slavery.” True friend:

He will always find time to chat with you, no matter how busy he is;

He will never offend you in any way;

Will not take advantage of your weakness;

Will make you laugh when you start to take life too seriously;

Will remain your friend even if you lose your job or go bankrupt;

Continues to love you, despite your achievements;

Protects you when people say nasty things about you behind your back;

Helps you become a better person;

He will always tell you if you have a piece of spinach stuck in your teeth.

But the most important thing, says Ernie Zielinsky, is that a true friend should be a little like the person you yourself want to become.

Someone who gets grades from D to C does not want to know more, to achieve success, and has no common interests with an excellent student. And since there are no common interests, there is no basis for friendship. So you shouldn’t blame excellent students for selfishness. Better think: what kind of friend are you?

Here is the conclusion: the one who studies with D to C grades does not want to know more, to achieve success, and does not have common interests with an excellent student. And since there are no common interests, there is no basis for friendship. So you shouldn’t blame excellent students for selfishness.

Want to know how to make friends with an excellent student? Take into account the words of the most prominent American writer and thinker Ralph Waldo Emerson: “The only way to find a friend is to become someone’s friend yourself.” Here it would be nice to ask yourself an important question: can you really be friends yourself? Re-read Ernie Zielinski's list. These are the qualities you should look for in others. But you also need to develop them in yourself if you want to attract real friends. Try to become the kind of person with whom you yourself would enjoy communicating.

If you want to soar with eagles, don't waste your time with chickens

Ernie Zielinski calls for this in his book. Let me rephrase: if you want to be an excellent student, avoid communicating with C students. You must be in a different camp. Therefore, look for friends among excellent students. You have so many common interests! And it’s not so difficult to find an excellent student friend in your own class, in a group, in a parallel class, or on a course. There is always at least one excellent student per class. So you should make friends with him. It is friendship, not just acquaintance.

Remember when I talked about Arthur, who moved to the first desk and became an excellent student? In this transformation, his friendship with his new neighbor, excellent student Vasya, played a very important role.

It all started simply with communication. Vasily, like most of the excellent students I taught, was a very sociable and cheerful person. His desire for knowledge, activity and ability to work did not diminish when a lagging classmate found himself next to him. On the contrary, Vasily helped his new neighbor in every possible way.

What about Arthur?

1. He found himself in a working environment. Next to him was a man who knew how to value his time, did not waste it on trifles, and directed his main efforts to study. Arthur no longer had the opportunity to have fun in class, as he did while sitting on the Kamchatka. In order not to die of boredom, he, willy-nilly, became involved in the educational process.

2. Before Arthur’s eyes there was a clear example of a successful student. He saw that excellent studies are not the lot of rare geniuses and aliens. A's are the result of the painstaking and hard work of ordinary schoolchildren, just like himself. Arthur gradually realized that he could work like everyone else.

Try to surround yourself with people who radiate warmth, kindness, and who have a fresh outlook on life. Look among those who, like you, strive for knowledge and share your interests. These people will form your circle of true friends.

3. Arthur received specific help from Vasya in the form of advice and tips. Let him just copy homework at the first stage. But he stopped receiving the most common, banal and humiliating failures “for homework.” Over time, there were fewer “naked” cheats, and Arthur increasingly prepared his homework on his own. His interest in learning arose and his self-esteem increased.

4. Vasily approved of his interest in studying and generally treated Arthur kindly. They spent more and more time together. Gradually, Arthur became involved in the company of Vasya, whose friends, if they were not excellent students, were very successful in their studies. Arthur's life became more interesting and richer. This supported his self-confidence and desire to change.

5. The teachers constantly saw Arthur next to Vasya. In the end, they too began to perceive him differently. I admit that Arthur was unable to completely change his school image; he spent too long in the image of a loser. But he came to the university as a completely different person, ready to start at the limit of all his capabilities. Which is what he did. You already know the result: Arthur became an excellent student at the university.

What conclusion should be drawn from this story? True friends, as a rule, add to your happiness, not take away from you. Arthur caught the virus of knowledge and excellent studies from Vasily, and this good virus fully manifested itself over time.

Try to surround yourself with people who radiate warmth, kindness, and who have a fresh outlook on life. This way you will have a circle of true friends with whom you can communicate, philosophize and grow spiritually.

Youth informal groups are created based on interests that have nothing to do with study, and sometimes even deny it completely in their ideology. This is a dead end. Your informal group can only be called “Class Achievers.” If there is no such group, create one yourself.

Many people, in order to find this happiness, strive to get into various informal groups. For someone who wants to become an excellent student, this path is completely unacceptable. It leads to a dead end. Youth informal groups are created based on interests that have nothing to do with study, and sometimes even deny it completely in their ideology. And your informal group can only be called “Class Achievers” or “School Achievers”. If there is no such group, create one yourself.

Love is excellent

There is a strong opinion that love has no place in school, that it interferes with learning. Parents are absolutely afraid that their children will start hanging out with peers of the opposite sex and give up on their studies. It could happen.

Let's say a boy who is an excellent student begins to be friends with a girl who is a C student (or vice versa). How will events develop? One will definitely pull the other along with him. Either the excellent student will take a friend/girlfriend in tow, or the excellent student himself will slip into C grades.

My experience is that the latter happens much less frequently. In three cases out of four, parents and teachers can count on a happy ending. Yes Yes! C students, falling in love with excellent students, begin to study better, quickly improve their grades, and sometimes even become excellent students themselves. Excellent girls very often have a positive influence on the boys who fall in love with them. Even the most inveterate C students, not wanting to lose face, willy-nilly awaken their academic talent and study better.

Such stories often happened before my eyes.

Any excellent student is a worthy and purposeful person. She chooses someone who does not want to be a renegade and a slacker in her eyes, but is ready to awaken his educational talent and creative powers.

Sasha came to us in ninth grade and immediately found himself in a group of C students. His best friend Denis barely got straight C grades. But after the New Year and winter holidays, a new student, Olya, appeared in the class. The girl was not only smart, but also very pretty. He and Denis became friends and soon were sitting at the same desk. And then events developed as if in a melodrama. Denis seemed to want to be friends with Olya, but he couldn’t part with his C-grade friends from Kamchatka. He was pulled back and forth. And she and Olya stopped dating. However, Sasha moved to Olya’s first desk. He gradually broke away from the other boys and became serious and purposeful. The year I am writing this book, Sasha is in the eleventh grade and, together with Olya, is preparing very seriously for the upcoming Unified State Examination tests. Now he has straight B's and A's. I think that he will study even better at university. His teaching talent is awakened and will not fall asleep.

I can remember many similar cases. Any excellent student is a worthy and purposeful person. She quickly understands who deserves her - an “authoritative guy” or a guy with brains in his head. And she chooses someone who does not want to be a renegade and a slacker in her eyes, but is ready to awaken his educational talent and creative powers.

Of course, you can’t order your heart. It is useless to advise lovers. So I just want to wish you: fall in love with excellent students, and may excellent students love you!

Now let’s together derive another formula for success and write down the seventh rule of an excellent student.

To be an excellent student, create your environment of excellent students. Make friends with excellent students, try to take the best from them and be worthy of their friendship.

Chapter Eight

Always be visible

The father looks through his son's diary. All subjects have rows of twos. And in singing - a big A plus.

– And are you still eating?! - the parent is amazed.

(Joke)

There was such a case in my school life. At the final exam in mathematics, after completing three out of five problems, I paused and decided to rest a little and look around. But then a teacher from the commission approached me. Let's call her Raisa Petrovna. She saw that I was distracted and decided that I was having trouble. Before I had time to come to my senses, Raisa Petrovna began quietly and imperceptibly dictating the solution to the tasks. I didn’t feel comfortable refusing her help, and I didn’t want to put her in danger, so I wrote everything down. Naturally, I got an A on that written math exam. But the story didn't end there. Raisa Petrovna ended up on the commission for the next exam, in physics. This is where I really had difficulty with one of the tasks. It so happened that I answered the ticket to Raisa Petrovna, and not to my subject teacher. She pretended not to notice the errors in my answer, and then quietly led me to the correct answer, and it all ended with a positive assessment.

Raisa Petrovna did not teach in our class, and she was not my class teacher either. In other words, she was not an interested party. Nevertheless, she helped me twice in the most important final exams, and I still remember her help and will never forget it.

Why did Raisa Petrovna sympathize with me? The answer is very simple.

The fact is that I was never a gray mouse at school. On the contrary, I participated in all class, school and inter-school activities. Naturally, I was a Komsomol member, then almost everyone was a Komsomol member. But I was part of the school’s Komsomol activists, and in the tenth grade I even had an official title - commissar of the Komsomol school organization. That is, among the Komsomol members I was the second person in school. That's why all the teachers knew and respected me. Moreover, I also learned to play the guitar and sang quite well at all school holidays and evenings, including at the concerts that we, schoolchildren, prepared for Teacher’s Day and the Eighth of March. The latter, I think, played a decisive role. Raisa Petrovna said: “You eat wonderfully!”

Social activity is a ladder to success. Those who take an active part in the public life of their educational institution are always visible. They are known by name and recognized by sight. The teachers like them.

I’m not telling you about all this to brag, like, that’s what an eagle I was. No, my task is to convey to you the obvious idea: social activity is also a ladder to success. And the majority of all the excellent students whom I taught and teach now took and continue to take an active part in the social life of their educational institution. They are always visible to the whole school, everyone knows them by name and recognizes them by sight. And they always have a certain head start when getting grades in class, because almost all teachers give them sympathize.

By the way, some rather weak students “move out” precisely because of social activities. After all, an activist can always refer to an important school event if he has not completed his homework, if he needs to take time off from a difficult lesson or retake a test. And few teachers raise their hand to give him a bad grade. Activists are necessary and useful people for the school. They sing, play musical instruments, draw, dance, have acting skills and defend the honor of the school at numerous competitions, festivals, and holidays. Someone has to do it. I can remember quite a few boys and girls who might not have finished school at all if they had not been so necessary.

In general, study is study, but we must also remember about life. And modern life requires that a person not hide from it, but be an active participant.

Sociologists claim that human society is divided into two unequal groups: an active minority and a passive majority. An active minority has clear goals, great ambitions and the energy to take action. Therefore, as a rule, it forms the elite of society - political, financial, spiritual, scientific, military, creative. But the passive majority always turns out to be driven. These same two groups are formed in any community of people.

Real excellent students, nine times out of ten, are activists. By engaging in community service, they develop and hone the leadership skills necessary for a successful career in the future. Therefore, former excellent students often occupy high leadership positions and positions.

Any community, including school and student communities, is divided into an active minority and a passive majority. And excellent students in nine cases out of ten end up among activists. There are no gray mice among the real excellent students. These are always bright and talented individuals who, at every possible opportunity, try to show their capabilities and talents, to shine both in the classroom and in extracurricular activities.

It is not surprising that many excellent students subsequently become managers and occupy the highest positions. Because, while doing social work, they:

Accumulate invaluable communication experience, develop communication skills;

Acquire public speaking skills and improve oratory skills;

Form the ability to quickly make decisions and implement them;

Strengthen their leadership abilities.

This is how leadership skills are formed. And this is a future career, rapid growth, high positions and, accordingly, a decent salary. Strictly speaking, isn’t this the ultimate goal of any education?

And it all starts with the fact that the student already in the elementary grades becomes rainbow elephant. The rainbow elephant is the exact opposite of the gray mouse. Gray mice are people who are afraid to stand out from the general gray mass and somehow attract attention to themselves; they live by the principle “Keep your head down.” The rainbow elephant does exactly the opposite.

When I start a lesson with the question “Who wants to tell a home lesson?”, I most often observe the same picture. Heads are lowered, faces are hidden. Everyone immediately becomes gray mice. But one or two hands will immediately shoot up. These are the best students in the class rushing to get a good grade. And they get it. They listen carefully, ask questions, enter into dialogue, try to start a discussion, and answer problematic questions. You remember them right away. And the attitude towards such students immediately develops friendly. You begin to perceive them as equal partners. Even if they subsequently do something wrong, make mistakes, I want to help them. We solve any problem, even the most complex one, together.

These students are the rainbow elephants.

The rainbow elephant is the exact opposite of the gray mouse. Such a student is in a hurry to prove himself in the lesson, he is the first to answer, ask questions, and enter into dialogue with the teacher. Teachers appreciate this activity. The rainbow elephant always has a head start over the rest of the students.

I will never forget my student Petya Osipov. I met him when he was in the eighth grade, where I began teaching the subject “Fundamentals of Legal Knowledge.” The acquaintance took place in the first lesson. Before I could begin explaining the first topic, Petya raised his hand and shook it desperately. When I gave him the floor, he began to tell what I wanted to tell. This has never happened in my practice. Whatever I was about to say, he immediately raised his hand:

- Can I? Can I tell you this? Please!

Petya literally taught the lesson instead of me. And he did it so kindly and unobtrusively that I was not at all offended or angry with him. On the contrary, for all four years Petya became my right hand in lessons in his class.

Do you think that he was like this only in my lessons? No, he was the most active and enthusiastic student in all lessons. Outside of class too. Whatever event took place at school, Petya was in the forefront and in the leading roles. He wrote plays in verse, directed them and played the main roles in them. In the tenth grade, he was the number one student in the school. Even eleventh graders recognized his complete superiority. Soon almost the whole city knew him. He was the star of the school, and although he graduated from high school five years ago, he is still remembered with kind words.

School is not a jungle, teachers are not predators. Not only your classmates, but also your teachers and school administration should know and love you. Instead of hiding from them, be always visible, actively respond in class, and participate in the social life of the school.

He studied brilliantly. He entered a very prestigious Moscow university and graduated with honors. I’m sure he was a real rainbow elephant there too, and he has a brilliant career ahead of him. He decided to devote himself to political activity. So you'll be hearing about it soon.

When Petya graduated from high school, we had a new star. Grisha D. was two years younger than Petya, and now he sparkled with all his colors and at full power. Only he sparkled not in class, but outside the educational process. Grisha was not particularly interested in studies. Having a wealthy father, he knew that in any case he would enter a university as a paid student. And if so, there is no need to study, Grisha decided.

But now it’s time for him to get his certificate. Grisha looked at the excellent students and drummers and realized that this was his first time at this school festival! - will be in the background. His pride was hurt. He confessed to me:

- Eh, why didn’t I study? Wasted so much time!

“I’ll tell you a banal truth: it’s never too late to learn,” I answered. And he told Grisha about his educational talent, which the reader already knows about.

- Why didn’t you tell me about this before? – Grisha was amazed.

– I recently found out. But better late than never.

“Better late than never,” Grisha agreed. “I promise that I will awaken my academic talent and will study with straight A’s.”

He succeeded. I know that he transferred from a paid department of the university to a budget one. And of course, it continues to sparkle with all the colors of the rainbow. The rainbow elephant remains so forever.

And we will formulate the eighth rule of an excellent student.

Be visible: be the first to answer in class, perform at all school concerts. Become a rainbow elephant and sparkle with all the colors of the rainbow! By engaging in community service in school, you develop the skills you need to be successful.

Chapter Nine

Get the best out of life

Aqvila non captat muscac. (The eagle does not catch flies.)

(Ancient Roman saying)

Here is another very instructive success story.

My heroine’s name is Oksana, I’ve been following her fate for many years. This story begins in an ordinary, still Soviet high school in the eighties of the twentieth century. Oksana M. studied very well. Mathematics and physics were her favorite subjects, she knew them well. But she was not good at the humanities; she just had to cram and fight for every A.

There were also problems with the teachers, because the girl had a very fighting character, besides, she had a sharp tongue and often could not restrain herself. She loved to argue and, as people say, to download her rights. If she were quiet, she would get A's without much difficulty. But teachers, as a rule, are not very fond of those who take on a lot. So Oksana was not allowed to go down. With her exaggerated demands, the geographer generally drove the girl crazy, and even to tears. In general, it was not possible to become an excellent student. A few offensive B's always showed up on the final score sheet.

She also graduated from her eighth year as a drummer. Oksana’s grandmother, by the way, a teacher, seeing her granddaughter’s torment, advised her to move to another school, a physics and mathematics school. The new school was far from home, and the girl would have to part with friends whom she had known since first grade. But our heroine had a goal - to enter the famous Moscow university. And for this it was necessary to withstand an impressive competition - dozens of people for one place. And Oksana made up her mind.

It is very important to choose the right place to start in life. Look for a school where your abilities will be fully realized. Strive to get into the strongest class, where the best students are selected, with the most experienced and demanding teachers working with you.

In a new school, a new life began. Mathematics and physics now had to be studied from morning to evening. Subject teachers, one might say, took seven skins from their students. But Oksana now received A’s in humanitarian subjects without much difficulty. The administration of the new school was lenient towards future physicists: they were not allowed to comprehend the harmony of words and the essence of human existence in history, so be it.

Oksana had to forget about meetings with old friends, about the previous company in which she was an informal leader. Even weekends were now devoted to problems and examples, experiments and laboratory work. At the new school, no one was particularly friendly with anyone; everyone was busy studying and taking lessons. It was not easy for the girl to get used to being alone, but her dad and grandmother encouraged her.

Oksana graduated from the ninth and tenth grades with straight A's. But the main thing is that she immediately entered the Moscow Institute of Management, one of the most prestigious economic universities in the country, where professional managers were trained. The country had just entered the era of a market economy, and Oksana, armed with economic and management knowledge, remained in the capital to pursue a career. She went into the real estate business, eventually became rich, and became a co-owner of a large company. Now she lives in her own three-story house in Barvikha.

What about her friends from her previous school? They, of course, also graduated from school, two of them even with medals. The whole company went to Leningrad. An influential mother arranged for one of them to study physics and mathematics. The rest failed the exams and went home. The same three girls entered the local university at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, where the competition was minimal. None of them were later able to get a job in their specialty, because factories and enterprises were then closed and specialists with a technical education turned out to be redundant on the labor market.

The education of the elite begins at school. It has always been this way. Even in Soviet times, when the curriculum was uniform throughout the country, there were schools with in-depth study of foreign languages ​​or technical disciplines.

Why did I tell this long story?

And to show how important it is to choose the right place to start in life. After all, one of the sources of Oksana’s success in life was her transfer to an excellent school, where all her abilities were realized one hundred percent.

Even in Soviet times, when the curriculum was the same for the entire country, there were special schools. They practically guaranteed admission to the best universities, after graduating from which one could count on a prestigious and highly paid job. Educational institutions with in-depth study of English, German, French or Spanish offered a chance to get a job in a field related to foreign trade. Those who later became the flower of Soviet science and industry and ensured the country's defense went to physics and mathematics schools. There were few such schools, but progressive parents did their best to enroll their children in these schools.

A real breakthrough occurred in the mid-nineties of the twentieth century, when school education in Russia became alternative. Lyceums and gymnasiums were able to pay teachers bonuses and recruited the most powerful teachers. Even in ordinary schools, lyceum or gymnasium classes were created. Now children who, for one reason or another, did not enter the best school in the city, can choose at least the best class in a regular school. But here's the thing. It is not so difficult to rename a school a lyceum, and call a class a gymnasium. It is much more difficult to fill them with worthy students and provide them with good teachers. The quality of education, unfortunately, is falling. Many gymnasium classes turn into ordinary ones after seven or eight years.

Do not chase after ringing names - gymnasium, lyceum. It is not so difficult to rename a regular school a lyceum and call a class a gymnasium. It is much more difficult to fill them with worthy students, provide them with good teachers and maintain the quality of education for a long time.

To become a true excellent student, you must try to take the best from the modern Russian education system. How? Here are three principles.

Strong class

An excellent student should under no circumstances adhere to the principle of “well done among the sheep.” So you can stay for the rest of your life to graze among the sheep and watch others soar into the sky. An excellent student should strive for the class where the best students are gathered and taught by the best teachers. Firstly, being among the best will help you grow faster. Secondly, you should get used to a competitive environment from a very early age; this habit will come in handy in today's life.

It doesn’t matter whether you are in first grade, third grade or seventh grade, it’s never too late to move to the best grade. Although it is better to prepare for this in advance, even before entering school.

Best school

A regular high school will not be able to maintain high quality education for a long time, even in a separate class. Most likely, you will have two or three strong teachers. And the rest of the subjects will be taught by ordinary teachers, and you will know all these disciplines mediocrely.

An important factor is the social environment, the general atmosphere in the school.

Needless to say, she was always aggressive in high schools. Weak students don't like it when someone studies better than them. And if there is an overwhelming majority of weak students, they are able to bully more talented children. Even if the class where the child is studying is relatively prosperous, he is still not guaranteed protection from pressure from school bullies. Sometimes it gets to the point where showing a desire to learn becomes dangerous.

We once showed the film “Balkan Boy”. The main character of this film, a twelve-year-old excellent student, suffers constant bullying from bullies from his class. Gradually he loses hope, becomes bitter and slides down. The film was filmed in Macedonia, but cases of such aggression, unfortunately, are not uncommon in Russian secondary schools. A Balkan boy ends up becoming a murderer and it all ends tragically.

In some high schools, even showing a desire to study better is dangerous - they will bully you. If in your school the majority are weak students, if they are aggressive towards excellent students, change school immediately.

An unfavorable environment not only for learning, but even for life, is one of the most significant reasons why parents try to place their children in gymnasiums and lyceums. In such schools, the composition of the students is more homogeneous, so that both the environment as a whole and the relationships between children are healthy.

So, for an excellent student, a regular high school is not suitable. The end result is important to us - the opportunity to learn fruitfully. How to choose a good school?

School choice

First, find out which schools are the best in your city or area.

You can rely on official rankings or the results of competitions held annually by local education authorities. These ratings take into account many criteria and can be trusted. Look for information on the official portal of the local education department or contact the city or district education department directly.

Collect all available official information about the schools that have become leaders in the rankings. Explore the official websites of schools. Pay attention to the quality of the website itself, because this is the face of the school. A functioning multifunctional website is a plus for the school.

After all, you don’t want your child to end up in a tribe of little cannibals? If in the school yard you hear “Hey, goat!”, or “Hey, kid!”, or not censored language at all, look for another school for your child.

Collect informal information. Interview your friends, look at reviews about the school on parent forums on the Internet. Chat with school students and their parents, you will probably find them in the school yard. The results of the “yard” rating may be contradictory, and collecting this information will take time. But it's worth it. Many parents consider it the most accurate.

The last, most important step is visiting the school, meeting the teachers and administration personally. A parental visit will only add points to the student: teachers respect and remember well those parents who take a responsible approach to their child’s education.

School quality criteria: what to look for

2. Connection between the school and universities. The share of school students who entered government-funded places in higher education institutions.

3. Successful students. Can the school be proud of its former students who currently occupy high positions and positions?

4. Teaching staff. How many employees have the highest teaching category, an academic degree, how well-known and respected are they in the teaching community? A little advice from personal experience: find out if the school has a teachers' choir. If so, run away from this school without looking back. Bulgakov also defined those who like to sing and rehearse for hours as slackers and mediocrities.

5. How stable is the teaching staff, is there any turnover among teachers or administration.

6. Administration. A good sign is a lot of experience. If the director and head teachers are new, recently appointed, you need to be more careful. Try to learn more about the new members of the school administration.

7. Long-term traditions. Good schools are proud of their past.

8. Material base and technical equipment. Does the school building, classroom equipment, laboratories, and computer classes meet modern requirements?

9. A well-groomed area, a stadium, a gym with a swimming pool - all these are important indicators; the school must take care of the health of students.

10. A good dining room is also a significant plus. After all, a child will consume not only spiritual food at school.

Finally, just observe the students at school. Is anyone crying in a corner or on the street? How do boys and girls communicate with each other? Is foul language heard too often? After all, you don’t want your child to end up in a tribe of little cannibals. It is considered a good sign when students address each other by name, worse if by last name. It is clear that schools where addresses like “Hey, you!”, “Hey, goat!”, “Hey, kid!” are accepted are not the place for your child.

Get into the best university

Not only schools are average, but universities are also average. Today there are quite a few commercial higher educational institutions, the level of which does not even match the vocational schools of Soviet times: neither in terms of the composition of students, nor in the quality of teaching. Only before, vocational school students studied there for free, and also received scholarships or monetary and clothing allowances. And today you also have to pay for such an education. A true excellent student has nothing to do in such institutions; he will not receive good knowledge there. With a diploma from an obscure and little-known educational institution, you are unlikely to immediately find a good, well-paid job, or even scare away the employer.

An excellent student should strive to enter a state university from among the best. And for a budget place. And not only do you not have to pay for your studies, but you also receive a scholarship. Employers pay attention not only to where the student studied, but also to who paid for the education. They are really after graduates from, for example, Moscow State University or Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. And excellent students at these universities, as a rule, receive job offers already in their third or fourth year. And they are offered to conclude an employment contract by well-known, respected and reliable companies.

A gold medal and excellent grades at school will help you enter one of the best universities in the country, and for a budget place. Employers pay attention not only to where the student studied, but also to who paid for the education.

There are exceptions to every rule. Sometimes they are happy.

One of my students, Katya A., five years ago entered our local state pedagogical university at the Faculty of Foreign Languages. This is very good, even prestigious. But by our provincial standards, Katya dreamed of Moscow and working in the media. After studying for a year, Katya still left the university and went to enter the capital’s university, where they train television workers. She had to pay a lot of money for her studies. But already in her second year, during an internship at Central Television, the talented excellent student was noticed and invited to work in the news department. Now she is graduating from university, working and paying for her education herself. Her name is heard almost every day on Channel One.

And all because she adheres to the principle “Take the best from life.” If you already dreamed of Moscow, then you went there, even if not in bast shoes, like Lomonosov, but you achieved your goal. A true excellent student should be like this – courageous and confident in his abilities.

This is the ninth rule of an excellent student:

To be an excellent student in life, take the best from the education system: enter the best class, the best school in the city or region, the best university in your city or even country. Excellent students can achieve any heights.

I owe everything good in me to books.

(Maksim Gorky)

I want to talk to you about the benefits of reading. Not textbooks, not reference books and encyclopedias, but fiction books. I vote for them not only as a writer, but also because I sincerely believe that reading is the most useful, interesting and exciting activity that mankind has invented.

The book you are reading now is dedicated to excellent students. It is believed that they do not like fiction, but only read textbooks. Another myth! No true excellent student will refuse a good, smart book. I know some excellent students whose reading experience was limited to the school literature curriculum. But this is also a lot. The list of must-read books is itself very impressive, and whatever you say, the program includes truly worthy literary works.

So I repeat: there are no excellent students who do not read books.

There are no successful people who don't read books.

Unfortunately, in the last decade the number of people reading has decreased sharply. This is evidenced by the circulation of books, which are quite small for a country like ours. The decline in interest in reading, among other things, is associated with the rapid development of new information technologies. Hundreds of new television channels, high-speed Internet, computer games have become available to us - all this replaces reading books for people. The tendency to switch people's attention to new sources of information is observed all over the world. And it causes the most serious concern. Why?

Of all the listed types of leisure, only reading is active. Everything else is a passive pastime. When we watch TV, a film in a cinema, a play in a theater or play a computer game, we perceive ready-made images that the author or director offers us. That is, we passively perceive something that cannot be changed in consciousness. And only reading a fiction book allows us to act as co-authors of the writer. We create in our imagination a new world, unique and inimitable.

There are no excellent students who do not read books. Only books form active, creative thinking, teach you to think, ask questions and look for answers to them. They broaden their horizons and teach them to express their thoughts correctly. To be a successful person, you need to read more.

As a children's writer, I constantly meet children of different ages and always wonder if they like to read. And that's what's sad. In the elementary grades, most children almost always love to read and honestly admit it. But the older the guys are, the fewer of them are fans of reading. The vast majority of ninth grade students openly and without hesitation admit that they do not like to read.

Man reading is becoming rare. Just as once upon a time, two hundred years ago, a literate person, much less an educated one, was a rarity.

Why then do excellent students read?

But because they live an active life and strive in this life to be not a consumer, but a creator. To create, you need to have the brain and soul of a creative person. And a person who does not read books will never become a creator. It is mediocre people who do not like reading and are even afraid of it. Remember:

“Collect all the books and burn them”? Famusov! And the Nazis did just that. Because Hitler did not need thinking people; he believed that he had already thought of everything.

Here is the answer: a person who reads is a person who thinks.

An excellent student is a thinking person, so he reads books.

Why does a thinking person need books? The Swedish Academy of Children's Literature gave answers to this question, and the newspaper “First of September” published them translated into Russian. I decided not only to present these answers, but also to reflect on them with you.

Why do we need books...

Well, you never know why? For example, you can dry flowers in them...

This, you probably already guessed, is a joke. Now let's get serious.

The first answer. The book develops our language and increases our vocabulary. It teaches us to express our thoughts and understand what others say and write. The speech of a person who reads is tens of times richer, brighter, more imaginative and interesting. It is filled with thoughts and feelings. A person who loves to read is never tongue-tied. He stands out even in a crowd; he has the look of a thinking man. That’s why I prefer book fairs to all fairs in the world.

There are crowds of people there too. But what kind of people are these! Readers! Thinkers! Sixty percent of them are probably excellent students. If only someone would undertake to check this.

The answer is second. The book develops our thinking.

By reading books, we learn to think abstractly; books expand the horizons of our world.

Why do little children read fairy tales about Kolobok, Little Red Riding Hood, Ryaba the Hen, the three bears and the three little pigs? Do you think it's to entertain? Nothing like this! When they want to entertain a child, they give him a lollipop. Or a ball to develop physically. The most stupid parents turn on the TV, which does not even provide this. And fairy tales are read to a child so that he started to think. Parents who are too lazy to read fairy tales and poems to their little children, replacing them with TV or sweets, then wonder why their children are so slow to understand at school and study so poorly.

The third answer. The book stimulates imagination and teaches us to think in images.

“In a book I find images that feed my imagination,” wrote the English writer Aidan Chambers. On TV we see the dog that the cameraman filmed. When we read in a book: “There is a dog on the floor,” we imagine our dog. Thousands of people will read these words, and a thousand completely different dogs will appear in thousands of heads, because everyone will imagine it for themselves. There are tens of thousands of such images in each book, and they replace each other at a speed hundreds of times faster than the speed of film. Anyone who has read many books can easily populate their own world with them, create their own universe. Your Imagination, as Boris Zakhoder said.

Nothing feeds our imagination like books. And only a person with a rich imagination is able to create something unique. For example, invent a bicycle or a hot air balloon.

Answer four. From books we learn about other countries and other ways of life, about nature, technology, history - about everything that interests us.

Jacques Paganel, the hero of Jules Verne's novel “The Children of Captain Grant,” assured that he could travel without leaving his chair. And I willingly believe him. Nothing could be easier! You just need to pick up a book, read a few lines, and you are transported to the other side of the world, somewhere in North America or India. With a book you can travel around the world, sail across all oceans, fight your way through impenetrable jungles, storm inaccessible mountains and conquer endless deserts. Isn't it great? And besides, all this without the slightest danger to one’s own life.

Who said there is no time machine? Walk up to the bookshelf with historical novels, and you will find yourself at a feast at Ivan the Terrible, spend the night in the palace of Cleopatra, and take part in the great campaigns of Alexander Suvorov. You will see with your own eyes the greatest events of world history and even become a participant in them. You just have to let your imagination run wild and awaken your imagination.

Answer five. The book develops our ability to empathize.

Through the book I live a thousand lives, remaining myself. This was said by Clive S. Lewis, the author of my favorite Chronicles of Narnia. How right he is! We learn to put ourselves in other people's shoes. Only with the help of books do we become different people ourselves. Isn't this the greatest miracle? Each of us can easily become Jim Hawkins and go on a dangerous journey to Treasure Island or arm ourselves with D'Artagnan's sword and save the Queen of France from dishonor. In cinema, only Mikhail Boyarsky is capable of this. And with the book, each of us can play the role of the hero of Dumas’ immortal novel.

Do you want to ascend to the royal throne? Pick up Valentin Pikul’s novel “The Favorite” - and now you are Catherine the Great or His Serene Highness Prince Grigory Potemkin. Millions of women went through the civil war between the North and the South, fell in love and experienced it with Scarlett O'Hara. How many men survived the hardships of the Great Patriotic War with the heroes of the novels by Konstantin Simonov and Boris Polevoy? And when you read Leo Tolstoy’s novel “War and Peace,” you immediately become Andrei Bolkonsky, Pierre Bezukhov, Natasha Rostova and Napoleon Bonaparte...

Answer six. Books give us strength and inspiration. They captivate and entertain us. They make us laugh and cry. They bring comfort and indicate a way out of a difficult situation.

In all the difficult life situations that happened to me in my life, I looked for first help in books. No matter what happened to me, no matter what tasks life gave me, I always knew: I was not the first to whom this happened. A similar situation has probably been described in fiction. Once you read the book, the solution will appear on its own.

Books help overcome feelings of loneliness and hopelessness. If your soul is sad, you can read something fun and cheerful, and the bad mood will go away. You can, on the contrary, take the saddest book from the shelf and realize that suffering is an inevitable part of our lives.

Answer seven. The books ask important questions that are worth thinking about.

What does a child who has just been read a fairy tale begin to do? Right! They never run about their business. He begins to ask questions: “Why did this happen?”, “Why did he do it?” Try to leave these questions unanswered! Will not work. The baby began to think, his thoughts were awakened and would never fall asleep. Likewise, a person who reads asks himself a variety of questions. And the ability to ask questions is the main sign of a thinking person. His second invaluable skill is the desire and ability to seek answers.

Answer eight. The book teaches us ethics, makes us think about good and evil.

In Vladimir Mayakovsky’s poem “What is good and what is bad?” The little son came to his father, who explained everything to him. And not only to him, but also to millions of children in our country. Who among us did not read this poem as a child? And what would we, parents, do if the great Russian poet had not written this simple, at first glance, little thing? But she is talented, if not brilliant: she is about the first step on the path of knowledge of good and evil.

People who don't read books very often don't even realize that their bad actions are bad. They have no way to know this because they don't read books. And their parents don’t read this and don’t know either. Morality is alien to them. Ethics too.

Joseph Brodsky said: “A person who has read at least one Dickens novel will never pick up a machine gun.” Simply put, man reading will not do evil deeds. Parents, teaching their children to read, create the most reliable capital in their lives. Because such children, when they grow up, will never harm them, will not betray them, will not abandon them in old age weak and sick. After all, they know what is good and what is bad.

In fact, this is what real books are created for. They bring goodness to our souls.

Answer nine. A book is a source of knowledge. The most reliable and inexhaustible.

The book explains life and helps us see the connection between one phenomenon and another. There are no questions that cannot be answered in books. It is not for nothing that in antiquity and the Middle Ages books were valued more than gold and diamonds.

The greatest losses of humanity are the burned-out Library of Alexandria, Moscow burned by the French, and monasteries plundered by ignoramuses. How many books have perished! How much invaluable knowledge they took with them!

Answer ten. Books answer the main questions.

Wisdom is the comprehension of truth. AND man reading can become not just a reader, but a sage.

Thanks to books, we understand that not all questions have clear answers, that any problem can be looked at from different points of view. The books show that conflicts are not necessarily resolved through violence; there are other ways.

Plato, Aristotle, Confucius, Augustine and Martin Luther, Voltaire and Rousseau, Kant and Hegel found answers to questions that concern humanity and determined the values ​​of our world. And they still make us think and reflect on the meaning of existence.

All this would be impossible without books.

Answer eleven. Books help us to know ourselves.

And this is no less important than knowledge about the world and humanity. But how to understand your soul? How to comprehend your own inner world?

It is very important for us to know ourselves. And it is very important to be able to compare your feelings with the thoughts, feelings and reactions of other people.

Answer twelfth. Books help us understand others.

It's easy to understand humanity. It’s difficult – yourself. Even more difficult are those who are next to you. By reading books written by writers from other cultures and eras and seeing that their thoughts and feelings are similar to ours, we better understand other cultures and get rid of prejudices.

Answer thirteen. You can take the book with you anywhere.

A book is a garden in your pocket, as the Arabic proverb goes. Books are always with you. They brighten up any loneliness. They can be borrowed for free from the library. And to start reading, you don’t need to create special conditions.

Robinson Crusoe had no books on the island. But he found a way out. He started writing the book himself! If not for this, his mind would not have been able to bear the loneliness. Robinson is a fictional character. But real people, when asked what they would take with them to a desert island, answer: books!

There is even a psychological test: the subject is asked to make a list of ten books that he would take with him to a desert island. This list says a lot about a person. Try making a list like this, you will learn a lot about yourself. And it’s worth taking a similar test every five to ten years.

Answer fourteen. Books are part of our cultural heritage.

They create common points of reference in society. Humanity would not exist on earth if it did not know how to read. And the best part of it is people reading.

Answer fifteen. A good book unites generations.

A good book can be read aloud to the delight of adults and children. Reading in the family circle unites the family because a spiritual connection arises between its members. And the spiritual connection is the strongest of all. So there is no more useful and important activity than family book evenings, there is no stronger unifying principle than the love of books and reading.

Answer sixteen. The book opens up a huge world for us even in childhood.

It all starts from childhood. A children's book opens the way for us to literature, lets us into a huge world that we master throughout our lives.

Answer seventeen. The book enriches the culture of the country.

Many people take part in the creation of each book - writers, artists, publishers, editors, printers, reviewers. Booksellers and librarians work to make books accessible to readers...

Answer eighteen. A book is an important cultural export.

A good book, both for adults and for children, brings income to the country and increases its prestige abroad.

You see how many arguments can be given in favor of books, in favor of reading!

I myself cannot live a day without a good book. I wish the same for you. However, if you, dear reader, are reading these pages and have reached the tenth rule, then you are a person who reads and thinks. And success will certainly await you ahead.

So the last tenth rule of an excellent student will be like this.

Read books, dear excellent students! Read good books. The bigger, the better. Be people who read and think. Reading is the most useful and necessary activity for an excellent student.

Either out of habit I can’t get excellent grades, or for some other reason. Everything is not the same at all. We will help you! And the question of how to become an excellent student can be answered very easily, but schoolchildren often encounter problems.

Excellent and good students know how to get the information they need in an extremely short time from teachers. Imagine? They can use absolutely all things for their benefit. Including the help of their own classmates.

1. See the teacher as a person. Often we accept them as monsters who are completely incapable of feelings. You are taught not by robots, but by completely healthy mentally people, and requires that you fulfill their requirements. Once they give you a bad mark, you immediately start getting angry and saying all sorts of nasty things about them. This is quite natural, but within reasonable limits. Stop, that’s not how you should do or act at all. Look with your penetrating gaze at their inner world, take an interest in their personal life. You don't have to literally extort from them the things they did tonight. Interest about their condition will help.

2. Look for the reason in yourself. Schedule your day from seven in the morning to ten in the evening. Many girls do this and achieve amazing results. They spend twice as much time on homework as before. It is worth noting one very interesting thing. Each person evaluates his or her performance according to his or her own criteria. For one person, a couple of fours a day is terrible, but for another it is enough. Observe the excellent students in the class, ask what their thresholds and tasks are. Make your life easier.

3. Build strict boundaries around yourself. If you were not prepared for the lesson or wrote a poorly written paper, then deprive yourself of something really important. Such things could be: weaning off the TV, limited outings with friends. Having done just this, you don’t have to devote any time to jointly solving problems in class with everyone. It is enough that you yourself can solve all kinds of verification work.

4. Be active in class. It is very pleasant for a teacher to look at his future excellent students when many raise their hand. This is how the children’s eyes glow, which means that the children did not spend the day in vain and prepared carefully for their lessons. This is what the teacher thinks. There are many examples where, only due to this quality, such students were set as an example to everyone. Pride is so bursting on all sides of everyone.

5. Let them trust you. So you got a five rating. Walk around in a high mood, and suddenly they tell you that they didn’t do the work themselves. But in reality this is not so. Why is this happening? Have you ever copied from someone else’s notebook and noticed this wonderful thing? Yes, you can sink deeply and not rise in the eyes of teachers. And then you will no longer be able to dream and take action to find out how to become an excellent student.

A smart and pleasant solution comes to the rescue, in the form of various and banal questions from teachers. We approach the teacher and try to understand an incomprehensible topic in class. Why would that be? "Ivanov took hold of his head and began to study?" We need to help him. Everyone loves to help someone, it’s just that no one talks about it, they’re embarrassed, look.

6 . Now all bright minds are very concerned about education. They are introducing new standards, trying to find new approaches to excellent students and ordinary C students. We had a special office where a psychologist worked. If any problems arose, we immediately turned to such a person. He was so sensitive and smart that everyone ran to him in droves. If this is not possible, then you can simply resort to the help of your friends and relatives. earn money, and then you will become an excellent student.

7. School is not a place to fight over grades. This is, first of all, knowledge gained through work. You can come out of there as very smart as possible. And what’s more, all this is provided for free. Just think about this excellent student. For free.

Especially now you have to pay for everything with your own resources, money. Take care of them if you can do without them.
Approach any type of activity from this perspective: I need this, where there is no place for laziness. Your efforts will never be in vain. When you receive some benefit, you warm up even more and try to apply all your mind to completing tasks.

8. It’s stupid to assume that if you understand a new topic but haven’t consolidated it, then you still haven’t learned. You may still have a very long way to go. Three necessary properties, please do not forget them. Write, memorize, listen. And why then are we surprised that some have five? They simply use their own methods (we gave them) and calmly, without any nerves, win various Olympiads and competitions. Such students are always visible and ahead.

Friendship with smart children can only warm you up. After all, you must admit that you want to be better than that same student who only answers at the board confidently and without hesitation. Therefore, do not be afraid of your own competitors, thank chance for the fact that they exist.

The most remarkable thing is that you are a girl. It is much easier for her to ask about how to become an excellent student than for boys. It’s just that when they see a female person, they immediately soften and begin to give others the opportunity to realize themselves. Tune in to the wave where everything is allowed to you, including free, gratuitous help.

Do you want to become successful in your studies? Easily!

There are several secrets for this. Following even one of these rules will bring success in your studies. I myself was a C student, and became an excellent student, so these secrets are hard-won and tested.

Secret 1. How to get rid of triplets? To get rid of Cs, you need to create a daily routine from getting up to bed, and strictly follow this routine. There should be a mandatory rule: do not go out until you have done your homework and learned your homework.

Of course, when the Cs disappear, it is not necessary to strictly follow the daily routine; in my opinion, it is even harmful. But until the threes disappear, we must follow this rule.

Secret 2. How to fill your diary with fives? Surely you have a favorite toy (computer, bicycle, motorcycle, doll, etc.). Make yourself a rule: play this toy only on the day on which you received at least one A, and at the same time not a single C, and especially not a D; If you didn’t get five on Saturday, then you don’t have the right to play this toy on Sunday. Follow this rule strictly. If you want to play your favorite toy, get five daily!

Secret 3. How to become an excellent student in a specific subject? The rule is very simple and easy to follow - do your homework on this subject on the same day it is assigned, do not put it off until later. Do your homework not before class when you are asked, but immediately after it is asked. This method has a lot of advantages: there is no more time spent, but rather less, because immediately after the lesson there is less to remember; psychologically comfortable - done, and free; and, finally, if the task is very difficult and cannot be solved right away, there is time to think about it the next day.

Do you want to become an excellent student in all subjects? Do your homework on the same day it is assigned for all subjects.

Secret 4. How to learn the material? How long does it take to get from school home, from the institute to the hostel? While you are going home, try to remember what happened today in every lesson, in every lecture, in as much detail as possible. Of course, not everything can be remembered. Then, when you get home, open your notes and repeat what you couldn’t remember. The advantages of this method are that very little time is needed, personal time and study time are not wasted, the material is remembered best.

Secret 5. How to pass an exam or test with an A? When preparing for the exam, review all the material. What is a review? A block diagram is drawn on a large sheet of paper, which reflects the basic definitions, concepts, theorems, lemmas, formulas, relationships, facts, events, etc., and all logical connections between these elements are drawn. Then all the connections and consequences of the course, the essence of the course, are very clearly visible. Before the exam, as a repetition, you should compile such a review from memory, without using notes, and also do such a review in your head. Our university teacher German Gavrilovich Pestov revealed this secret to us, his students.

Secret 6. The exam begins at the consultation. To successfully pass the exam, you need to impress the teacher during the consultation: ask at least three SMART questions. Moreover, they should be asked approximately in this order: first a question from the end of the course, then from the beginning of the course, then from the middle of the course. Then the teacher will get the impression that you are well versed in the course, and half of the exam has been passed.

Secret 7. Get them to cheat from you. Then you will have to explain to those who cheat how it happened. When you explain, but they don’t understand you right away, it’s very good, because then you look for another way to explain, and then a miracle happens: you discover the issue under discussion for yourself from an unexpected angle.

School years are considered the most wonderful and almost carefree. Few will argue with this statement. Parents only require good grades from students as confirmation of their knowledge. However, not all students study well. Many children skip classes and receive unsatisfactory grades. Almost all schoolgirls have a question about what to do to become an excellent student. There is a lot of practical advice on this matter. Let's try to deal with each separately.

The first tip on how to become an excellent student: change your thoughts and mood

First of all, you need to tune yourself to the right wave. You can only get A's and study well if you have your own desire. No teacher, tutor or strict parent will force you to study well.

Imagine that you are already a good student and constantly receive praise from teachers and parents. Classmates and friends in the yard envy your ability to do everything and get straight A's. Do you like this outcome of events? If yes, then learn from the following tips how you can become an excellent student.

Before changing your inner world, you need to change your outer appearance. If you love bright colors, dress rather flashy and dye your hair an acid color, then it's time to give it all up. Give preference to classic office outfits and a neat hairstyle. Have you ever seen a successful lady with bright green nails and pink hair? Of course not! So don’t allow yourself to look like this. Show yourself some respect.

When you start wearing classic dresses, trousers and shirts, you will begin to make a completely different impression on others. Teachers will respect you and your peers will admire you. You will notice that even the boys in the class began to pay attention to you, because these are the kind of girls who take care of themselves that guys like. Try to match your future image of an excellent student.

Step Three: Build Relationships with Teachers

Before you become an excellent student, you will have to change not only yourself, but also your attitude towards others, in particular towards teachers. If you skipped school a lot or did not study well, then your teachers probably formed a negative opinion about you. It's time to break this stereotype.

Become interested in the subject you are studying. Ask questions in class, but at the same time, don't be too curious so as not to appear stupid. Listen carefully to the teacher during class and do not receive comments related to bad behavior.

If after this the teacher does not want to change his attitude towards you, then perhaps you should talk to him. Remember that teachers are just ordinary people. They will always make contact. Ask your teacher to explain a topic you don’t understand or to conduct some individual lessons.

This method is suitable for subjects such as algebra, geometry, physics, and chemistry. These exact sciences require consistent and continuous study. If you skip a few topics, you will no longer be able to understand how to solve problems and examples. This is why it is so important not to miss anything.

Get yourself a separate notebook or notebook in which you will enter all the definitions, examples of complex problems and options for their solutions. You can also write down the formulas and stable numerical values ​​you need.

If there are already gaps in knowledge, then try to study the missed material on your own. Ask your parents to help you, they will certainly appreciate your efforts, and you will receive well-deserved praise. You may need to take a few lessons with a tutor to improve your knowledge.

Step five: proper homework preparation

Before you can top your class, you'll have to completely overhaul your daily routine. If you previously put off preparing your lessons until the very last moment, you will have to give it up. Sitting at the computer for long periods of time, games and walks can wait. Everything has its time. After completing the required task, you will be able to do what you love. Let this be an incentive for you.

Try to complete your homework on the day it is received. After a while you will like this option because the work assigned a few days ago for tomorrow’s lesson has already been done. Also, the topic covered in class will be reinforced by doing homework or reading the necessary literature. In this case, the information will be deposited in your head in the maximum amount.

Try to listen carefully to the teacher in class, as you will need much of what is said for your homework. Do not try to copy completed assignments from your classmates; this will not bring you any success in deciding how to become an excellent student.

Don't cram the subject. Try to read the information several times and understand the topic as much as possible. If you begin to understand rather than memorize the material, then it will be much easier for you to become a good student.

The sixth step to success: participation in school life

In order to gain respect and praise from teachers, you need to be interested. Take an interest in school life and activities. Participate in clubs, competitions and attend free lessons. A teacher who sees your thirst for knowledge will never give you a bad grade.

You may have to miss some classes because of your participation in school life, but not a single teacher will give you a minus for this. On the contrary, the teacher will support and praise your desire to be a leader.

Seventh Step to the Top: Tell the Truth

How to become an excellent student at school? Stop lying to teachers and classmates.

A lie is revealed sooner or later, and this does not make a good student look good. Try to always tell the truth to people, or don't say anything. A teacher who has caught a student in a lie, already at the subconscious level, begins to form a negative opinion about him, which, in turn, is quite difficult to change and gain the former trust.

You should also not deceive your parents. Of course, they won’t give you a bad grade for this, but if you want to become an ideal student, then be ideal in everything.

Alternative options

Some schoolchildren believe that magical amulets and various rituals will help them become excellent students. Undoubtedly, there are coincidences when, before becoming an excellent student, a girl at school performs a so-called ritual.

The most popular witchcraft is the following method.

You need to take a blank sheet of paper and write on it your desire to become a diligent student and get straight A's. After this, you need to burn this leaf and divide the resulting ashes into four parts. Next, you need to place the remnants of the desire in the corners of the classroom in which the lesson will be held.

Another option on how to become an excellent student is to use methods of influencing the teacher.

During the lesson, look carefully at the teacher and mentally send him information about the desired grade. Perhaps you have the gift of hypnosis, and this method will be successful. In this case, you can consider yourself very lucky.

There are also so-called conspiracies or spells, after reading which you will become an excellent student.

It is worth recalling that all magical actions have no proven power and in most cases are just pampering. In order to study well, get good grades and have the respect of teachers, you need to put in a lot of effort.

Conclusion

Learn all the tips on how to become an excellent student. Analyze your behavior, find out the pros and cons. Write down an action plan for yourself to achieve your goal.

Know that even an excellent student who is unprepared for a lesson will never be given a bad mark by the teacher, but will be given another chance to prepare. A student who gets straight A's always inspires the trust of school employees. Being an excellent student is wonderful!

Remember that you won’t be able to become a diligent student overnight. To achieve the desired result, you will need to work on yourself for more than one day and, possibly, more than one month. Don’t despair if at first your behavior causes distrust from your classmates and teachers. Over time, everything will fall into place and you will achieve good results. Go towards your goal no matter what! Be an excellent student and make your parents happy!