Term 3 is upon us and students will be approaching assessments and examinations in many subjects including Maths and English.. There are a number of things students can do to prepare for their exams. Some are short term tasks and others require a more consistent approach. Central Coast Tutoring are offering three study skills tutoring sessions to help work through these short- and long-term tasks so that they have the skills to adequately prepare and feel confident as students move toward their upcoming exams.
Ensure your work is up to date
Firstly, students need to ensure that their work from previous terms is up to date. Once students get to high school it becomes their responsibility to catch up on missed work. This means they have to initiate the conversation with each teacher to collect sheets and missed work if they have had a week off as a close contact, or perhaps even had Covid themselves. Family holidays can also be another reason why a student may need to approach their teachers to discuss missed work. Many of today’s teachers will use a platform to send work to students. Google classroom is one such platform where students enrol in a virtual class and teachers attach tasks for students to do. This is a great place for a student who has missed some work to start. Check the date in question to see if there has been any work or tasks posted. The student may then need to approach their teacher to clarify what was needed as they may have missed the class explanation and class discussion which is always very useful in determining exactly what is required.
If there is no work posted for that lesson, a student could then ask a friend what was covered on that day, look at their book or their class computer file to see what they completed. There is always a risk in asking a student what to do, as students don’t always have all the information or may get some of the information incorrect, thus sending the student who has missed the work down the wrong path.
After checking the class virtual platform and checking with other students, it is very important that a student who has missed work approaches the teacher for clarification. This will most likely not be able to happen during a lesson. A student who has missed work could suggest that they remain after class when the lesson ends before recess or lunch. This means that the student will have the undivided attention of the teacher and this is invaluable when clarifying any missed content. A teacher may also ask the student to come to their staffroom as they may not have the resources required with them in the classroom. A student who has missed work has to put the effort in to make sure they get all the information required. So that might mean putting an alarm into their phone to remind them that they need to see a teacher at a particular time or day to catch up.
Find out what is on the exam
Once all of the work has been collected and they have caught up on any missed work, it’s now time to ask their teachers what will be in the exam. Most teachers will have a summary sheet or slide which has a list of all the tasks or topics that will be examined. There is no use in studying topics or tasks that will not be in the exam, so this step is crucial in saving time and effort in a student’s preparation. This can also be used as an additional checklist to ensure that they have all of the information. Sometimes a teacher will say that the exam is based on a series of chapters of a set textbook. So ensure that they have a physical copy, borrow it from the library or see if the teacher can attach a copy of the chapters to their class virtual platform. If after going through the topics and tasks to be examined and a student finds they are missing something, this is the time to ask, as other students in the class may also be missing this task, or the teacher may not have actually taught that part due to their own absence from school. This is particularly important if the exam is a year wide test. That is, all students in a given year are being tested using the same exam. So if a teacher has been away and a part of what will be examined was not covered or not covered adequately by an untrained casual teacher, this is the time to ask the teacher to revisit that part of the topic so that your class is not disadvantaged by the absence.
The above are all simple tasks that many students forget to do prior to their exam week. Sometimes students are too embarrassed to ask in front of the class. If this is the case, don’t just not do it – find a way around it. For example, ask a trusted friend to go with you at lunch time to ask the teacher for clarification. Most teachers are more than happy to help any student who shows the initiative and comes to see them in their own lunch time.
Preparing for the Exam
Once a student has done all the ground work, there are a number of study skills methods they could use to prepare their work ready for studying. Summarising your work is the next step in preparing for upcoming exams. This can be a time consuming process and many students are not really sure how to go about this step. At this point it can be useful to engage someone with experience from Central Coast Tutoring to help you with this step.
The way that you summarise can depend on the type of learner that you are. Some of us learn really easily using tables and written text, while others of us need a graphical presentation of the work and that enables them to learn the required information. It can be useful to do both in order to find out which works best for you as the learner. Setting up a table with the terms, task or other headings in the left hand column and the definitions, formulas and examples in the right hand columns makes it really easy to locate the information you have been covering in class. A mind map can also be a great graphical summary tool. Putting the topic heading in the centre and branching the parts of the topic from the centre. Often if you are a visual learner, you can see your mind map in your ‘minds eye’ during an exam and this helps you recall the information you require for your exam. It is also useful to ask your teacher to review your summary to see if you have covered all the examinable content. This is a good way of double checking that you have not missed anything. The subject syllabus is also a great checklist that can be used to double check that you have included all the required information in your summary
The next most difficult part of the study process is actually learning the work. The summarising process is a useful way of starting the learn the work that will be examined, but it will take more than just the summary alone. There are numerous methods to learn your work. The most simple method is, ‘Cover, write, check’. Read your summary or a section of your summary, then cover it up, attempt to reproduce what you have just read and then check what you have written against your summary. This allows you to correct any mistakes or identify what you need to keep learning in order to know it off by heart. It’s also important at this stage to set yourself realistic goals for studying. Putting together a study timetable where you allocate time to each subject that will be examined is important, but the time for each subject needs to be realistic. So don’t set yourself blocks of study time that are hours long, because you will most likely not be able to stick to it and then feel you have failed. Half hour blocks are a more realistic portion of time where you can focus on the content to be learned for a short but intense period of time. Reward yourself for each half hour that you complete. This might mean going for a walk, watching a short youtube clip, listening to a favourite song, getting a snack. Then get back to it. It will require discipline. If this is not your strong point, then work with a friend and keep each other on track.
At this point it is also very useful to find a friend in your class who is at the same or similar level to you. Working with a friend to compare your summaries and test each other is a fantastic way of testing your knowledge once you have put in the time to learn the work. A tutor from Central Coast Tutoring can also be an invaluable asset in checking and testing a student to see what they know and how well they have learned their subject summary.
Practice questions and past exam papers are a great way of testing what you know and using the information that you have learned. Ask your teacher for some past papers or to put some similar questions on the class virtual platform and complete as many as you can and ask the teacher to look over them and point out anything that you have missed.