Year 10 going into Year 11 (Tips and Help Please!!!) (1 Viewer)

[selma859]

So I'm in Year 10, and I am going in to Year 11 next year. I am ready to work hard and put in the hard work to get a good ATAR (aiming for 90+ hopefully). My chosen subjects for next year are:

Advanced English
English Extension 1
Mathematics
Biology
Chemistry (hoping to change to Legal Studies early next year)
Business Studies
Society and Culture (HSC course)

I want to start preparing myself during the upcoming summer holidays. How should I do this? Should I start going through textbooks and teaching myself? Can anyone recommend any good textbooks? What did you do during your prelim year to improve and get good marks in the HSC? Any tips are appreciated everyone! Thank you so much for your help everyone!

 

[plutonium-238]

When you want to prepare for next year, it is often recommended to read through the basic ideas of a textbook. If you are going to keep chemistry as your subject, I recommend the textbook Conquering Textbook as it presents many important information at which many of it is relevant to the syllabus; however, there are many more to choose from and that is currently the only one I know of. For mathematics, use Excel mathematics revision guide as it aids you for next year and is less difficult than standard textbooks, e.g. Cambridge. Good luck with your studies!!

 

[hawkrider]

Read your prescribed texts for English in the holidays. That way, you can be prepared and you'll understand the textual analysis better.

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk

 

[strawberrye]

Besides preparing yourself physically for studying ahead in subjects, for some this is relatively easy to do such as maths-just practice, practice, and mark your answers, biology, business studies-can read the textbook and understand concepts, society and culture-best to use the holidays to think about your PIP topic since you are doing it as an accelerated course, and yes, for your English subjects-can ask your teacher what you are likely to be learning next year and read those before hand
But the really important thing is to make sure you have a prepared psychological mindset for senior year studies, i.e. it is all very well to have a very positive attitude of work hard and put the hard work in, but what I mean by psychological mindset is you must have a much tougher mindset to prepare you not just for the much greater academic rigours of the senior years, but also a corresponding increase of expectations-i.e. taking more responsibility for your self-learning, more proactive role in asking questions when you don't understand instead of blaming the teacher for not teaching the syllabus content thoroughly enough, significant increase in work load, and basically you need to make sure you have consistent performance in all your subjects-consistency is very important-both in your academic performance(I am talking about at optimal levels) as well as consistency in your study routine, learning methods and sleeping patterns-don't study 24/7 because you will wreck your body and by then your atar will become meaningless if you destroy your health-take care of yourself, do relax a bit in the holidays-you need enough relaxation to get you to keep working very hard for the next two years-and I think if you prepare your psychological mindset over the holidays, it will help you even more than pure attaining academic knowledge

 

[rumbleroar]

Don't burn yourself out too much in year 11, save your energy for year 12. But with that being said, don't slack off either.

In the holidays before year 11, I didn't do anything (tbh I had no idea what to do so I just went on tumblr hahaha). I think it's just mentally preparing yourself and getting into a habit of not procrastinating, learning how to organise your work into manageable piles and practicing effective time management.

However, with biology (and any other science you are planning to do), I recommend starting to write syllabus notes. I did tutoring for year 11 physics half a year earlier (i.e. in year 10) and had to start writing notes, as part of the homework. At the time, I hated it, but looking back, it was extremely handy to have previously learnt everything and have it in note form because when prelims rolled around, all I needed to do was whip out my notes and skim over them. Also, make them EXTREMELY thorough and detailed the first time round, because I had to rewrite some of my notes because they weren't good enough. Also, you will go into year 11 knowing exactly whatever your teacher is talking about, so that is a big bonus!

Advanced....hm....get your related texts for your AoS sorted these holidays. It depends what module you're doing. I did relationships, but I know friends from other schools did journeys. So then when you have to write essays, you already know what you're going to write about and it isn't as panicky.

EE1 - ALWAYS DO YOUR READINGS!

Maths - look at textbooks like Cambridge and Fitzpatrick and begin to do exercises from there. Do it in the order your school does it in and just start practising! To improve in maths, you need to not only conceptually understand everything, but DO LOTS OF PRACTICE!

Not sure about business studies or SoCo, sorry!

Recommended textbooks/resources:
- Cambridge (maths)
- Fitzpatrick (maths)
- Past papers from other schools, when you get up to doing that, for maths
- Biology in Focus (bio, I think my friends really like that, but I don't do bio myself)

Also try and keep a 'balanced' lifestyle! Do at least 1 sport and 1 extra-curricular so you don't go insane from school

 

[enoilgam]

To be honest, I'd probably take it easy over the holidays and maybe do a bit of light reading here and there as well as a glance over the syllabus. There is definitely something to be said about being well rested prior to heading into year 11 and 12 - the rest can help ensure that you are prepared mentally.

 

[hit patel]

Overall Relax

 

[s-tressed]

During the summer before year 11 I spent a lot of time with mathematics practice ( revision from year 10 ) - not so much, if any, on other subjects. For maths I was doing selected exercises almost everyday with a break on Saturday. I would spend 1 or 2hrs on maths and that made things a lot easier for year 11. For the most part, just relax now. Year 11 is honestly not too much of a big deal compared to year 12 but it's great you're trying to get into good habits. The two most important things I learnt from year 11 were to:

- complete your study notes before hand.
I know this gets tough when the flood of assignments comes in but try your best to stay on top of them. During the first couple of weeks when you don't have assignments keep your notes up to date, attempt to throughout the term then catch up towards the end and during the holidays. You could try a different way but for me, that's the only way I have time. I found this really useful in biology since there is a lot of content.
- Do past papers
They help a lot. Try to select questions from past papers that are relevant to the things you've covered. Also save some to do a week or two before exams under exam conditions.

But the number one most important rule is to learn to be persistent. One bad mark does not foreshadow the outcome of your HSC. Don't ever stop believing in yourself. The prelim/hsc has highs and lows and you just have to be prepared. If your aren't pleased with the way you're going then accept what's wrong, think about what can be changed and move on!

Goodluck!!

 

[iEatOysters]

Honestly, I think it'd be better for you to enjoy your holidays while they last because it's going to be a rollercoaster of a year after this. Although it'd be good to consolidate your understanding of maths and/or read a few of your prescribed texts before next year. This is because life seems to accelerate when you're in years 11 and 12, so it's easy to be overwhelmed by everything that's required of you. It definitely doesn't hurt to read widely to hone your creative writing skills.

But definitely kick back and relax!! Don't stress over school too much in the holidays as you're going to tire of doing work pretty quickly once year 11 hits. Good luck!