As we move closer towards the exam, hopefully students have made or are in the process of making their bound reference. This week, we will take a more in depth look at practice questions as well as touching on time management throughout the remaining weeks before the examination.
Disclaimer
These are recommendations and not everyone learns in the same way, so take all advice with a grain of salt.
Practice Exams
Given that we are still 7 weeks out from the examination, I don’t think it is 100% necessary to be starting practice exams yet.
Practice exams are your best resource in your revision programs meaning I think it is definitely best to leave the VCAA practice papers from the last 4 years until we are closer to the exam.
At this stage I would advise students to look at completing external practice exams like NEAP, MAV, TSSM ect. If these external papers are not available, no big issue, I would look to complete the revision chapters out of the textbook or have a go at Checkpoints or questions on the specific topics that will be examined.
Time management
Time management is a tricky issue with exam revision programs in general. Your time management skills will affect your entire VCE results, not solely your Further Maths results.
My advice for time management is to use a diary or calendar system. For me it was a ‘Weekly planner’ from Kmart for $3.
In this ‘Weekly planner’, I would have my daily goals. When I say ‘daily goals’ I mean the specific revision work I aimed to complete each night. Having this structure for your revision program provides motivation and ensures that you never feel uncertain about what you should be doing. Furthermore, it really does ease that that ever-present anxiety and stress in regard to examinations.
I didn’t always achieve my daily goals, perhaps I procrastinated to much or an activity took far longer than I thought it would. This is not an issue as long as you are aware that you still need to catch up on this activity.
More specifically for Further Maths, at this stage I was not completing full practice exams. I was completing externally made practice exams in ‘chunks’, doing them bit by bit.
The great thing about Further Maths is that a lot of questions do not require extreme creative thinking and are more about practicing a process. Given this, I was always listening to music or podcasts whilst working through Further practice exams or revision questions.
I think this is a really good strategy as it allows Further Maths revision to be almost a break from the grind of other subjects and allows you to stay more motivated.
Again, this may not work for everyone, some people might feel very distracted whilst listening to music. For me personally, I always had to remove my earphones when I approached a harder question in order to think more clearly.
Conclusion
I hope the strategies I went through today are useful to your revision programs. Good luck in your final sacs and I hope you are able to get stuck into some Further Maths revision questions.
Stay Safe!