Learn The Art of Studying with Victus Study Skills {A Product Review}

When I told my oldest son that he and I would be working on a review from Victus Study Skills System he looked at me kind of funny… in the way a teenager who is less than impressed with his Mother does. I, however, remained optimistic and completely excited about the prospect of teaching the skill of studying. You see, how to study a lesson is something I am not well versed in teaching. In fact, it’s not something I fully understand how to do myself. As a child in school, I rarely had to spend time going over materials before a test and my oldest is quite similar. And while I understand the importance of studying, note taking, and even time management, it’s challenging to explain their significance to a child who simply absorbs information.

Which means, as we embark on the end of his first year of high school, it’s still a skill I feel he is lacking. Not only that, it’s a skill I’d like him to develop before he ventures out into the world. Even if he never needs to use it. Regardless of his lack of immediate enthusiasm, I waited for Level 3 (5/6 – 10/11) of the program to arrive.

What Is Victus Study Skills?

The Victus Skills System was created by Susan Ison over the last 30-years as the result of a simple yet honest question from her daughter – “how do you study? (Teacher Edition, Page 6)” This one question led Susan to not only answer her daughter but to also create a product that helps teachers, students, and homeschoolers alike master the skill and art of studying.

Rather than relying on simply reading, rereading, not taking, and quizzing, the Victus Study Skills System considers and teaches on four important concepts (Teacher Edition, page 9).

1. Zeal without knowledge is not good, but zeal with knowlwdge bears fruit.
2. Result come from the process.
3. Any system with all of its components mush have an aim or purpose.
4. An effective system of study has the greatest likelihood of aiding in sucess.

Sound good, right… but what does this mean? Simply put, it helps learners of all ages understand the steps and strategies that can help them learn what it is they want or need to learn. More importantly, it shows the learner that their attitude about what they are learning and how they approach the topic plays a huge part in their overall success.

In a nutshell, it’s teaching them how to effectively learn.

What Is The Victus Study Skills System?

The Victus Study Skills System is actually a series of four different levels that expand on one another. Divided up by grades, the four levels can be started as early as Kindergarten (Level 1) and proceed right up through college (Level 4). Each level requires the teacher edition as well as one student workbook per student. While the lower levels only have six lessons, the higher levels offer 10. Additionally, you can get a classroom video, a power point presentation, and even a student planner to aid your children in applying the lessons they are learning.

And because it’s a system, rather than a simple class, you can teach the materials multiple times over the course of your child’s education. Repeated exposure to the materials allows for additional learning as well as growing in the concepts, systems, and your child’s ability to apply the program to their education.

Each level follows the same basic format of evaluating where the student is starting, determining where they want to be, and then developing a plan of how to get there.

Starting Out With The Victus Study Skills System

When the program arrived my son was still on the fence about the product, but I dove right in! As a reviewer, we received not just the Level 3 items for grades 5-11 and the teacher’s edition, but all of the materials for all four levels of the program. I spent some time looking at the scope and sequence page, checking out the workbooks for all four levels, and thumbing through the student planner.

The first thing I noticed was that there was a lot more to this system than I had originally thought. I quickly found the material I needed to spend the most time with, the Teacher Edition, and sat down to start learning what I needed to know.

The first 20 pages of the Teacher Edition are dedicated to teaching you about the Victus Study Skills System and how to use it. It’s quite an interesting and motivating read. I found myself excited to start the program and ready to see it put into action. Yet when I got to the end of the first section and found myself staring at the start of section two (and the beginning of teaching these lessons) I found myself slightly confused. While the first section was fascinating and inspiring, I still felt like I had no clue how to actually work through the program.

Confident that there had to be more to it, I began reading section two yet quickly realized this was where my son came into play. I needed to read and teach from my book, while he listened and wrote in his.

One of the things I love about the Teacher Edition is that it gives a full-sized view of the student pages right in the book along with any answers that are not personal. Lesson one was easy enough for my son to complete as it was a page on study habits. He simply needed to decide if he completed each of the items on the list never, sometimes, or often.

Lesson two found us working on learning strengths. The Teacher Edition states the purpose of the lesson, the preparation I needed to make before the lesson, and the procedure I needed to use to teach the lesson. Yet here is where we ran into our first issue with the program – nowhere could I find the information I needed to explain to my son that would allow him to properly fill in the blanks of his student workbook. We struggled through this lesson a lot as we both felt there was a disconnect between the information in my book and the expectations in his. And following his self-evaluation to determine his own learning strength we both questioned the results. The learning strength we both believed to be his dominant one was actually 3rd based on this page. After checking his answers (which I agreed with) and double checking his math (which was correct), we simply moved on. This was the last part of the “Where Am I Now?” section so it was time to start the “Where Do I Want To Be?” portion of the program.

Time To Dream

This section of the system allows your student to dream a little about their future and think about how their future dreams have changed over the years. A few years ago, my son was determined to go into engineering and we made sure to keep that in mind when planning for classes he would take. Now, that dream has changed as a new passion for computer technology has taken route and we are adapting his education again.

Regardless of how long a dream remains a goal, it’s good to plan for it which is what this section covers. Creating a mission statement, deciding your priorities, and looking to see how you spend your time are all part of this section. These are great things to think of. If your goal is to write a 50,000-page novel in the next year, yet you spend no time actually writing that novel currently, you are either going to need to change your goal or change how you use your time. And whether your goal is large or small, you need to be spending some time working to make that happen.

This is also where your child will be introduced to SMART goals.

Ok, So How Do I Get There?

After a few lessons on dreaming it’s time to figure out how to get from where you are to where you want to be. A logical next step. Instead of simply dreaming about running a marathon now we are going to make a plan to take you from walking a mile a day to running that mile and beyond. This happens by looking at your time, figuring out how you use it, where you waste it, and how to make time for your goals.

And while this information is all amazing to have, even my son questioned this particular portion of the program simply because schedules do not work well in this house. It’s that we don’t like to schedule – it’s that there are simply too many variables in our days and weeks to create a schedule that can actually be followed.

My suggestion – do your best. Schedule out what you know, leave wiggle room, and make time for your goal that you know you can commit to. Yet at this point, after running into more than a few lessons that were confusing to complete even I was losing my excitement for a program that was supposed to be about studying and so far had covered goals, dreams, and time management. Yet we continued on.

PQRST, Note Taking, and Short Hand

Finally! Lesson six started off with study tips and I felt like we had finally found what we were looking for. Much like an acronym I was taught in college, the Victus Study Skills System offers students the PQRST method of preview, question, read, state, and test. More importantly, it explains the reasoning behind each step and how to do it. Note taking and its importance is covered as well along with some great tips for writing in shorthand.

Like a lightbulb, my son realized that’s why note taking a few years ago for a history course all of my kids were taking took so long – none of them actually took notes. They wrote everything out, word for word, and it was trying on the patience of us all. This is one of the reasons why taking notes for any of my kids has been a challenge. Simply put, we don’t know how. I never needed too and up until this year, none of the kids have had to either. Taking notes in the history class was supposed to be helpful, an idea from the company to help with retention and build a skill. Unfortunately, it didn’t work and we were all left a little scarred by the idea of taking notes.

The next section on shorthand notes was fun though and even though I don’t know how all of the suggestions would work long-term (like skipping all vowels) some of them do look like they would work very well.

Test taking is the last lesson in the system before lesson 10 which is a review designed to help students evaluate what they learned.

So, What Did We Think of the Victus Study Skills System?

This was an interesting review, that much I can say. My initial excitement was quickly chipped away by several lessons that were confusing and simply put, didn’t work for this house. Yet, in the spirit of an honest review, I did my best to keep an open mind about the program over all.

The second half of the program my son and I both enjoyed much more than the first half. Where the first half seemed to offer us only stumbling blocks and left us baffled more than once by the correct answer, the second half was the breath of fresh air we needed. This was the information we were looking for, the help that was relevant. And even though it was presented in the exact same manner as the first half of the book, the second half seemed different for us. Which leads me to believe when it comes to the Victus Study Skills System, “it’s not you, it’s me.”

And that’s truly how I’ve felt this entire review period. Like the problem wasn’t with the Victus Study Skills System itself but with us. Luckily, there were plenty of other Homeschool Review Crew reviewers on this program and you can see just how well they fared with this program.

As for us, we are done and taking a break but I want to give this another try with one of the other kids. We did receive all four levels of the program after all. Let’s see if a break and a fresh start, mixed with some prior experience, has us feeling differently in the future.

Don’t just take my word for it – see what the other reviewer thought of the Victus Study Skills System.