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.
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.
posted by Library Blog | 3:18 pm
5 Comments:
I completely agree with what the Library Blog said, how cramming doesn't help, and you need to put everything into your long term memory a good while beforehand. I myself find it hard to recall everything from my "long term memory" and instead revise small portions of the subject at least once a week, for practically the whole last semester. I find, that if you can remember everything and revise it while it is fresh, it won't be as bad in the long run. So my advice, is to pay attention in class, ask as much as you can, revise regularly, and you'll do fine.
One question though; what should people with short-term memory do in these situations?
Thankyou for your very thoughtful and well considered comment Roberto.
I would love to respond to your question but I am unsure of exactly what you would like to know. If you could clarify it further that would be helpful.
TC
I think that what the library blog says about cramming is true, sometimes when I study for a test, I cram and then a few days after the test I forget most of the things that I had learnt. In exams there is a lot more than what there is in a test so if you cram, you will not remember everything. But things that you learn throughout the year might not be stored in your long term memory, maybe because you aren’t focusing or just don’t like that topic, there are all sorts of different reasons. I find that the methods to study mentioned by the library blog are pretty useful to use. Studying throughout the year is a lot better than studying at the last moment.
I agree that studying and trying to learn things in a short space of time is a very bad idea. I myself have suffered ftrom doin this and in the end. finished up with a bad mark in my test.
Learning things and spacing things out over a longer period of time is deffently a much better way to go. I have tried this and worked much better because i was not stressing and worrying about what was ahead of me.
I have also tried mind maps a few times and they help get me into the right frame of mind to help me getting started in essays.
Lots of the things said in this blog are very good points and can be very helpful to prepare for tests, exams and writing essays.
I will take some of these things into account and hopefully they will help to get my best results i can get.
I'm sorry TC, I can't agree.
You have to see, cramming works for me.
I've done it since year six, and I know all the trix. Instead of studying for ...wix, I'm listening to forty licks and picking up chicks...lol
Have you noticed that there's a rhyme, I do it all the time. I will give you a dime, that I stole utilising crime. Lime I'm a Mime, aka Risotti.
I was watching growing up gotti, while waiting for a wookie. I'm native american cherokee, that stupid car stole the name of a pround indigenous people.
I'm sick of capitalism and bolshivism and stupid cultural maoist revolutions and their disregard for ancient and great cultures.
Anarchy all the way, It's anarchy in the UK. Death to the USA.
I wanna go to the.. USA, but I'm stuck on a minimum wage. (that's a cool song, google/wiki it TC)
In essense, I cram all the time, and I have a short attention span.
Your biggest fan,
JC (and no, I'm not Jesus)
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