ABSTRACT
One of the nation's leading medical schools reported an intriguing finding from studies of patients suffering from hypertension. Patients receiving treatment were routinely asked to monitor their blood pressure, taking it several times a day and recording the results on a chart. Completely apart from their findings of the effects of the various treatments, doctors began noticing a lowering of patients' blood pressure that seemed to be associated with the record keeping itself. Keeping the record tends to put teacher and student on the same page, so to speak. A very helpful activity is to have students keep records of the amount of time they spend on their homework and the number of pages they read. Spelling scores, mathematics scores, and other more easily quantified items are obvious material for record keeping. A student who acquires and applies the record-keeping skill early on is given a method of organization that will prove useful across a range of life activities.
