hschelper01
Active Member
- Joined
- Apr 6, 2020
- Messages
- 168
- Gender
- Male
- HSC
- 2019
Welcome back to Term 2!
Some of you may feel a little lost right now because it’s one of those terms that doesn’t have an exam block, a rarity in Year 12 I know! The next round of exams you'll complete is your trial exams - but what happens this term and where should your priorities be for the next 10 weeks?
Here are my top 5 suggestions for tackling this term:
1. Get your notes done!
Although you don’t have exams coming up this term, it doesn’t mean that you can just forget about your notes and think that they’re not important. This is actually the time that you need to be focusing on your notes the most, because you will have time to make sure they’re up to scratch. You’re a fair way through year 12 now which means you’ve done enough of the syllabus for your notes to have real depth and meaning.
The most effective way to get your notes done is to cross-reference them with the syllabus. This literally means having your notes open, having the syllabus open and going through to make sure you have every single dot point covered. For each dot point, you should only have relevant information such as key definitions and meanings, important dates, case studies and examples, and any other information that is directly relevant to answering a question about that content in an exam.
We have heaps of blog posts about how to effectively write your notes so be sure to check them out.
If you need help writing notes, PM me or leave a message in the thread!
2. Do your practice essays and hand them in.
Now is the time to do all those practice essays that you said you’d do in the last holidays but never did. It’s really important to start doing practice essays now because it gives you enough time before the holidays to go through the process of handing them in to your teachers for marking and feedback, implementing the feedback and then reworking your essays so they become better. This process will also help you learn what aspects of your writing you need to work on and the more writing you do now, the easier it will be in the exam.
It’s also important that you’re writing these practice essays to a whole range of questions so you’re not unpleasantly surprised in an exam. A really important study technique you should be implementing this term is the process of answering blind questions. Blind questions mean not seeing the question beforehand, just like you would in an exam. The way I would implement this in my studying would be by writing out about 30 different essay questions on slips of paper, putting all those papers into a hat and when you’re ready to write a practice response, pick the question out of the hat like a lucky dip. Then you just write. Closed book and timed. This may seem a little scary at first but trust me, it pays off.
3. Know what you don't know.
Following on from my last two points, by having your notes up to date and doing as many closed book practice responses as you can, you’ll be able to discover what you don’t know. This will point out the gaps in your own knowledge and hopefully allows you to restructure your study to fill in the gaps before exams come rolling around.
Knowing what you don’t know also allows you to evaluate where you’re at and decide if there are any changes you need to make in the way you approach school and studying. This could mean that you need to participate or engage more in class, it might also show that you’re not doing enough after school studying or that you just need to step up your game a bit. Either way, it’s much better to get a handle on this now as opposed to the week before your exams.
4. Ask for feedback from your teachers.
After some self-evaluation in step 3, it’s time to ask for the opinion of your teachers. Your teachers are experts in knowing how prepared students are and if they should be doing more (or less) work. So, schedule some time with all your teachers to sit down and chat about your goals and what else you can be doing to achieve those goals.
This term, your teachers are there to help you prepare for the next set of exams so make sure you use them as much as you can. Listen and implement what they have to say and you’ll be on the path to success.
5. Write, write, write!
This may sound a little repetitive but I cannot stress this point enough. This term you should be focusing on writing. Writing your notes, practice essays and short answer responses. I would also highly recommend using the time you have now to go through all of your textbooks and answer the chapter review or focus questions for every chapter. This may seem like a lot of questions, but it’s honestly the best way to;
a) know you know everything you need to, and
b) practice turning your notes into actual paragraphs that specifically answer the question.
This is where a lot of people fall short. Most people have awesome notes and spend all their time memorising them, but at the end of the day you can’t answer your exam questions in dot point form so what’s the point of studying them in dot point form? Spend some time turning your dot points into paragraphs. This is what I did for my notes so that by the end of the year, I had an example answer (that had been teacher approved) under every single syllabus dot point. That way when it came to memorising my notes, I not only learned the content but also learned how to use that content for an exam style question.
Summary:
I think the most important thing this term is to get organised. Get your notes organised, get your study techniques sorted, have your essays written and marked and write, write, write. It’s really important to not only have the content there but to understand how you’re going to use it in an exam. So, use this exam free term to get your prep done so that when holidays roll around, you’re ready to just do practice papers all day every day!
Hope it helps
Some of you may feel a little lost right now because it’s one of those terms that doesn’t have an exam block, a rarity in Year 12 I know! The next round of exams you'll complete is your trial exams - but what happens this term and where should your priorities be for the next 10 weeks?
Here are my top 5 suggestions for tackling this term:
1. Get your notes done!
Although you don’t have exams coming up this term, it doesn’t mean that you can just forget about your notes and think that they’re not important. This is actually the time that you need to be focusing on your notes the most, because you will have time to make sure they’re up to scratch. You’re a fair way through year 12 now which means you’ve done enough of the syllabus for your notes to have real depth and meaning.
The most effective way to get your notes done is to cross-reference them with the syllabus. This literally means having your notes open, having the syllabus open and going through to make sure you have every single dot point covered. For each dot point, you should only have relevant information such as key definitions and meanings, important dates, case studies and examples, and any other information that is directly relevant to answering a question about that content in an exam.
We have heaps of blog posts about how to effectively write your notes so be sure to check them out.
If you need help writing notes, PM me or leave a message in the thread!
2. Do your practice essays and hand them in.
Now is the time to do all those practice essays that you said you’d do in the last holidays but never did. It’s really important to start doing practice essays now because it gives you enough time before the holidays to go through the process of handing them in to your teachers for marking and feedback, implementing the feedback and then reworking your essays so they become better. This process will also help you learn what aspects of your writing you need to work on and the more writing you do now, the easier it will be in the exam.
It’s also important that you’re writing these practice essays to a whole range of questions so you’re not unpleasantly surprised in an exam. A really important study technique you should be implementing this term is the process of answering blind questions. Blind questions mean not seeing the question beforehand, just like you would in an exam. The way I would implement this in my studying would be by writing out about 30 different essay questions on slips of paper, putting all those papers into a hat and when you’re ready to write a practice response, pick the question out of the hat like a lucky dip. Then you just write. Closed book and timed. This may seem a little scary at first but trust me, it pays off.
3. Know what you don't know.
Following on from my last two points, by having your notes up to date and doing as many closed book practice responses as you can, you’ll be able to discover what you don’t know. This will point out the gaps in your own knowledge and hopefully allows you to restructure your study to fill in the gaps before exams come rolling around.
Knowing what you don’t know also allows you to evaluate where you’re at and decide if there are any changes you need to make in the way you approach school and studying. This could mean that you need to participate or engage more in class, it might also show that you’re not doing enough after school studying or that you just need to step up your game a bit. Either way, it’s much better to get a handle on this now as opposed to the week before your exams.
4. Ask for feedback from your teachers.
After some self-evaluation in step 3, it’s time to ask for the opinion of your teachers. Your teachers are experts in knowing how prepared students are and if they should be doing more (or less) work. So, schedule some time with all your teachers to sit down and chat about your goals and what else you can be doing to achieve those goals.
This term, your teachers are there to help you prepare for the next set of exams so make sure you use them as much as you can. Listen and implement what they have to say and you’ll be on the path to success.
5. Write, write, write!
This may sound a little repetitive but I cannot stress this point enough. This term you should be focusing on writing. Writing your notes, practice essays and short answer responses. I would also highly recommend using the time you have now to go through all of your textbooks and answer the chapter review or focus questions for every chapter. This may seem like a lot of questions, but it’s honestly the best way to;
a) know you know everything you need to, and
b) practice turning your notes into actual paragraphs that specifically answer the question.
This is where a lot of people fall short. Most people have awesome notes and spend all their time memorising them, but at the end of the day you can’t answer your exam questions in dot point form so what’s the point of studying them in dot point form? Spend some time turning your dot points into paragraphs. This is what I did for my notes so that by the end of the year, I had an example answer (that had been teacher approved) under every single syllabus dot point. That way when it came to memorising my notes, I not only learned the content but also learned how to use that content for an exam style question.
Summary:
I think the most important thing this term is to get organised. Get your notes organised, get your study techniques sorted, have your essays written and marked and write, write, write. It’s really important to not only have the content there but to understand how you’re going to use it in an exam. So, use this exam free term to get your prep done so that when holidays roll around, you’re ready to just do practice papers all day every day!
Hope it helps
