General Rules to each promotion:
- You will have to complete all the tasks that are written on the back
- After you have gotten signed off on all of those tasks then you will need to get tested by your Platoon Sergeant, then your First Sergeant, then your Company Commanders, and finally the instructor
- For this test all you will need to do is stand either at attention or at ease, and repeat their rank back to them as well as the question and its answer: for example, if the question is being asked by your First Sergeant and the question is “What is the rank of One stripe up?”, you would respond with “First Sergeant, the rank of One stripe up is Private”
- You will also need a concurrence form from your teachers saying that you at least have a 75% in each class and you have a decent moral system
- (Blue Worksheet)Perfect, you have just gotten the first promotion worksheet done now it is time to move onto the second one which will get you promoted to Private First Class!!
- The first objective that is listed on the sheet is for you to recertify your knowledge that you gained on the first sheet
- This will be one of the commonalities between all of the sheets, you will do this the exacts same for every worksheet going forward, you will do this by answering a few select questions from the previous sheet to ensure that you still retain that knowledge
- Next you will be asked to name and explain the seven-army value, there are a couple of easy ways to do this:
- To remember all of the names for the seven army values just use the acronym L.D.R.S.H.I.P(Loyalty, Duty, Respect, Self-less Service, Honor, Integrity, Personal Courage)
- The definition will be the more difficult part of this task, but if you actually internalize what the definition is saying then it will become much easier
- For example, Loyalty is to bear true faith and allegiance to the U.S. Constitution… your peers; that’s the definition but what does it mean? Loyalty is vaguely defined as abiding by something or someone and not betraying them, if you just apply that to the actual definition and memorize the words by repeating it to yourself multiple times then the memorization will come easily
- Just rinse and repeat for the rest of the values
- For the LET knowledge questions you will have learned some of them by now such as “what happened on September 11, 2001?”, but for the ones that you have not learned yet, I would recommend learning them both backwards and forwards
- What I mean by that is take for example the question “What military operation was launched on 21 March 2003?” you will eventually know that it was Operation Iraqi Freedom, but the best way to actually learn this is to also know that Operation Iraqi freedom was launched on March 21, 2003
- Don’t just learn what is written on the sheet like a robot but actually understand it by turning the question into a complete sentence so that you will completely learn the information
- As far as the Chain of Command Goes the easiest way to learn that is by memorizing the ranks that go along with each of the titles, for example the President has the “rank” of honorable attached before their name
- If you do this to all the ranks it may help, but as the government continually changes who is in command of each section, I am unable to help with the memorization of the names
- I would also recommend that you learn what the sections full name is so that if you are asked who the P.O.T.U.S. is you can immediately understand that I am referring to the President of the United State
- For the ranks I hope by now you know all of them and the difference between officer and enlisted, but if you are still struggling with them please scroll up and refer to how I recommend to memorize them
- Map reading: this is another aspect that require memorization but there is a trick to it; common sense
- I mean when someone asks what Blue means on a map you could probably make the connection that they are referring to water
- However, three out of the five colors may not follow common sense as easily
- For brown you can think of mountains that need CONTOUR lines to show ELEVATION and RELIEF for the different heights, you can think that since they are made of brown dirt and rocks it becomes connected
- You may mix up black and red, it happens a lot but one easy way to separate them is that Black is BY itself for the representation; black is only manmade objects
- Whereas red stand for people and other manmade objects
- For the 5 Major terrain features you can think of the phrase Hidden Valley Salad Ranch Dressing
- Hidden stands for Hilltop
- Valley stands for, you guessed it, a valley
- Salad stands for saddle
- Ranch stands for ridgeline
- Dressing stands for a depression
- For the Winning Colors differentiating them is pretty easy if you can figure out this simple trick
- Brown and builder both start with a B
- Blue is a color that often represent emotions so that can be connected to the relator
- Green is a color that is representative of money, and you gain money by PLANNING to do some task in exchange for the cash
- Red is the most active color so it can be related to Adventurer
- For the definition of the Winning colors just remember they are used to DETERMINE THE STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES OF A TEAM that’s it, its as simple as that
- As far as raising, lowering, and folding a flag, this will be taught as the year progresses but if you want to learn how to properly raise and lower a flag then come to the room early in the morning and on specific days your company will be in charge of raising the flag(Monday is HHC, Tuesday is Alpha, Wednesday is Bravo, Thursday is Charlie, and Friday is Delta)
- As far as folding the flag there are a couple of steps that must be followed to do it properly
- To fold both flags you will always do it at waist height while pulling the flag taught to get a clean for, typically two people fold the flag but three is preferred method to fold the flag which is can be seen by referencing:
- To correctly march in a squad all you have to do is wait for the next Tuesday to happen and when it does and the companies have a drill day just mention it to your squad leader and they will for a squad or get someone else to merge squad so that you can complete this task
- For the cadences: again, just ask someone who is more vocal to say a cadence and just repeat after them and it is now done
- For the seventh task which is to attend an out of school activity related to the Battalion, the easiest way would be either to attend a practice or go to Keep Our Campus Clean after school on Friday
- The last task you have to do is make sure that all your JROTC forms are turned in which is pretty simple