What is most important skill? I'll give you a clue - you're doing it right now. It's not reading, although reading is an extremely important pathway of learning.

It's "thinking". The most important skill involves learning how to use our internal software and hardware. The hardware being brain and software being thinking patterns or "thoughts".

This letter is to introduce you to study skills guide and how "thinking" is real reason for it's creation, which took about 6 months and sums up some of most important "ACTION" and "LEARN to THINK" activities I've come across in my 20 years of classroom teaching.

So what are benefits of using guide?

1. The guide is a personal learning resource and reference for learner, presenting easy to use strategies.

2. The guide targets important skills and in particular "attitude".

3. "Study Skills," is a way to promote proactive learning.

4. This resource is a personal development course to work through at individual's pace.

5. The guide provides essential transferable skills needed to acquire understandings and knowledge.

6. The guide provides perfect transition course for learner - before and during college.

Hi, Joseph Sgro here. I'm author of The study skills guide - created with student's success in mind. In this article I do a bit of teacher talk, but in essence I'm here to encourage parents who sometimes struggle with their teenagers.

Unfortunately, I can't solve all problems that come up, but I'm very familiar with problems students have in class and in 1994, I had a deep desire to try and alleviate some of pain. Since then all my privately tutored students have used my study skills program and most have succeeded at school.

The study guide has been used successfully with all ages and I believe it will work really well with your high school student.

Good Results with Adults I find that adults who want to return to education courses profit from exercises. It gradually brings them up to speed.

Here are some of different people who have used guide: I've used it with one adult that was a remedial masseuse, another who was a personal trainer and another lady who was studying history at university. These people have all achieved and managed to pass their courses.

What Teacher Expects In class students are expected to understand question, know how to research, collect information, sift through data and come up with a logical way of presenting information.

Those requirements presume that students already have those skills and are motivated. Do your students demonstrate a lack of goals and purpose? Does student behaviour produce a poor class environment and sloppy results?

Would you like your children to be more motivated to succeed and would you be eager to see them develop a new sense of purpose, with goals that will promote learning, more enthusiasm and acceptable class behaviour?

All of these things are possible!

Students can be encouraged and guided in class to establish more powerful goals to create "purpose" in what they do - aren't powerful goals what work best for adults?

They need to be shown how to find resources, how to decide which information is relevant, how to make notes and how to organize and present that information. The guide focuses firstly on developing right attitude and sense of purpose. Spending time on these essential aspects will virtually guarantee better results from your students.

What Happens in School? What really happens? Most of time is spent on disruptive students and not on developing skills and learning content.

Fine tuning..

How many students today walk into class feeling apprehensive and wonder whether this will be just another opportunity to fail? They do not see that there is anything to learn from failure other than that they are not worthy of success.

How do we help them through a difficult growing period in their lives? How do we turn our words into actions?

This is why study skills guide was developed. It was a way of offering a friendly hand and some reassurance, while students tackled those dreaded assignments and devour endless content.

Each page attempts to make a contribution by reinforcing or explaining essential skills and understandings. Some points merely need revising to refresh what we already know, while other sections set scene for important learning.

Fine tuning our approach to learning.. The skills section is last section in guide because text is more than just exercises - it is a short personal development course.