Exam preparation

The end of the school year is closing in fast; I can feel it. The air of excitement surrounding the year twelve boys is getting thicker by the day. Over the next eleven weeks boys across the Senior School will prepare for and sit exams. For some boys, this will be their first taste of them, for others it will be the last time that they sit in an exam here at school.

It is crucial to your success that you find a way of learning the content of your subject well. This is more than just cramming.

Cramming doesn't work! Cramming is trying to remember large qualities of information just prior to your exam. It doesn't work because the information is only going into your short term memory, which is not very good at storing large amounts of information. This means that you will often lose much of what you are trying to remember before you sit the exam. Some people will open the paper and fail to recall anything at all.

With any luck you have actually learnt much of what you need to know for your exam during the year. Once you learn something it goes into your long term memory, which can store incredible amounts of information for a very long period of time. This is why in year twelve you have 30+ weeks to learn the curriculum but only about 3 weeks to revise it. And revise is the key word.

During the revision period you are going over the things that you have learnt so that they are fresh in your memory, this way you are able to recall them easily during your exam. It is also a time where you will find very small (hopefully) gaps in your knowledge and the aim then is to learn this missing information. This should be easily done as it is a small amount only and it is related to the information that you have already learnt; this learnt information acts as scaffolding to support you learning the new information more easily.

Different people have different methods that they find useful for revision. A large percentage of the population are visual learners, they learn though images and pictorial representations of information. Lists of information are not the most productive way for visual learners to learn information.

Information can be represented visually in various ways. Pictures and diagrams are fantastic, they do not have to be works of art, they just need to portray the information that is important. Using colour to highlight, make groups etc is also a very powerful technique. The third technique, which can be incredibly useful, is the use of concept maps (mind maps). This uses a combination of words, visual layout showing connections and hierarchy and also utilises colour. Software programs such as Inspiration and FreeMind are also available now so that you can even create concept maps on the computer.

If you have not tried creating a concept map before I would highly recommend that you give it a go. They can be very simple representations of large amounts of information with complex connections. I am more than happy to help students with learning how to create the most effective concept maps at any time. I would also recommend that you check out some of the books written by Tony Buzan about Mind Maps. The following link is also a good mind mapping resource http://www.thethinkingbusiness.co.uk/mindmappingbenefits.htm.

Please ask any questions you have about mind mapping, exam revision or anything else discussed here, or post any positive experiences that you have had with using mind mapping techniques.

Happy Roald Dahl Day

Ok so I missed it. Roald Dahl Day was on the 13th of September. So I guess it is a belated Happy Roald Day greeting. :o)

September the 13th was Roald Dahl's birthday and if he were still alive he would have turned 90 this month.

Like millions of people around the world, I grew up reading Roald Dahl's books and watching the movies that were created from them. The BFG is my first memory of Dahl's books; it was read aloud to us in one of my primary classes. I also remember there being some focus on him when he died in 1990, which was around the same time that I was able to read his novels independently.

Whilst many authors have their fans, and some remain popular from generation to generation, very few seem to have the timeless appeal that has kept Dahl's books on popular reading lists for close to five decades.

My personal favorite is been Matilda. It is typical of Dahl's stories where good triumphs over evil and the innocent, good child wins against the nasty adults. I am sure that part of Dahl's appeal to children is that he engages their imaginations with magical story lines and humorous and often made-up language, but he also challenges their minds with long and uncommon words and complex jokes. As a young girl myself, who also loved to read, I was certainly able to connect with the character of Matilda.

I would love for people to share their own favourite stories and characters of Roald Dahl.

Perhaps if you haven't read a Roald Dahl in a while September is the month to do it!

TC

Promotions

I just finished reading an interesting article. It was a report from the San Fancisco Chronicle and it was about a particular book promotion. We are used to seeing books promoted in magazines, on posters around the place, in fancy stands in bookshops and via word of mouth. In recent years promotion through the Internet has rapidly increased with many writers now having their own web sites etc. Of course if a book is lucky enough to be made into a movie, the book itself will often see increased sales and readership, some even assuming cult status (Da Vinci Code, Harry Potter etc).

The thing that made this most recent promotion newsworthy is that it has never been done before. The publishers hired a film maker to create short film (about a minute and a half) based on a section of the book. The clip was professionally produced and was made to make the audience want to find out what would happen next. The clip was then put on YouTube. The idea being that thousands of people would see it and be inclined to email it to their friends. In this way, millions of people become intrigued and want to buy the book to find out what happens.

We are used to seeing movies made from books. Many readers are often disappointed in the results. So what happens when this happens in the reverse?

Part of the enjoyment in reading a book is that we are able to create images of the characters and the setting in our minds; perhaps if we see someone elses visual interpretations of these things first it will take away some of the enjoyment of the story.

On the other hand, I am sure that we miss hundreds of fantastic books simply because we don't ever find them. Perhaps the writer is unknown, the cover isn't appealing, it doesn't have the expensive displays in the bookshops and it is never made into a movie.

Perhaps this promotional technique will be a once off, of maybe it will become a very popular and successful way to promote books amongst a generation that spends far more time on the internet than in book stores. Regardless, I believe that it will still be word of mouth (or email) that will have the greatest force for promoting books.

I would love to know what you think about this promotion idea and also the most successful methods you use to find great books.

TC

Blog # 1

Welcome to the first PAC library blog!

I wanted to set this blog up as a new way of communicating with the school community, particularly the students. My intention is to share a lot of information about many different topics; some of which might include specific books or genres, information literacy skills, new additions to the library, the Internet and much more.

I would very much like this blog to be interactive. Anyone can make comments in response to my blog. This might be in the form of questions, personal comments/opinions or information. A collection of comments between people on the blog can create whole discussions online. I would like you to feel that this blog is as much yours as it is mine.

There are however some rules...

Whilst you will most likely access this blog via the school intranet; you need to keep in mind that it is hosted by an external site and that it is able to be read by anyone on the Internet. For that reason, personal information is not to be published. When referring either to yourself or others please only use first names, initials or an alias.

Language and content must be appropriate. Anything that is deemed as inappropriate will not be published, this includes low level swearing.

This site is to be constructive. Derogatory, defamatory and put down type comments will not be published. Any criticism must be constructive and not offensive. Differences of opinion should be just that and not a debate over who is right or wrong.

I hope to see as many staff and students as possible playing an active part in this blog. Enjoy!

TC