Are You Ready for Exams?

Study, but Not the Night before Exams!

It’s been a pretty good semester. Thankfully, it’s coming to an end. You can’t wait for next semester. Maybe you have music, gym, science—but wait! One last obstacle stands between you and that beautiful pass on your report card: exams. Unless you are one of the very few that enjoy sitting in a classroom for an hour or so writing the ultimate test, then you’re probably stressed. One thing you should know before you start freaking out is that you should not panic! Panicking is the worst possible thing you could do. That is why you need to sit down, take a deep breath, and know there is one thing that could be the difference between a pass and a fail, or even an 89% or 90%. You must study! Study, study, study! It cannot be said enough, and before you freak out about that here are the top five tips on how to get the most out of studying and maintain quality over quantity.

Tip #5) Gather all of your notes

Many teachers will tell you exactly what you need to study for their exam. If this is the case, compile all of the notes, assignments, and tests you have from the semester and create two piles: one for the things you need for the exam, and another for the sheets that will not appear on the exam. This will make the content you need to study appear a lot less frightening and it organizes exactly what you need into one place so you’re not shuffling through notes you don’t need. For those whose teachers have not provided a list of things you’ll need to know, do the same and compile your notes. Instead of sorting out what you need and don’t need to study, look for the most important units and topics you’ve discussed in class. Learning goals and success criteria are very useful for determining what is most important to study and what is not. Look at these goals and criteria and find the corresponding notes, they will be the most helpful! Go back and look at your teacher’s website and you can usually find success criteria or useful information.

Tip #4) Go in order

Now for what to do with those notes you’ve gathered! When you have your pile of sheets you need to study, put them in order from what you learned first to the most recent information. Start studying the oldest notes first, and spend more time on them as you haven’t looked over them for a while and will need to be reminded of some of the more difficult concepts. Dealing with these notes from the beginning of the semester first gives you plenty of time to recall them and go over everything. Studying the most recent notes last is better because since you’ve just learned them, you shouldn’t need as much time to go over them. Also, studying your notes in order will make the exam a lot less stressful because it will probably be in order from oldest to newest content as well.

Tip #3) Use techniques to help you remember content

You have a note in front of you, now what to do with it? There are many different ways you can mark up your notes to help you recall information. One of the most common and useful things to do is highlight! Highlight important content, key words, definitions, and so on. For every note, there are likely multiple topics for which you must highlight, so use different colours for different things! For example, highlight important things you need to remember like “Sophie from The Chrysalids has six toes” in blue, and definitions like “osmosis is the diffusion of fluids through membranes” in orange. COLOUR CODING is huge! This will help you identify the difference between what you highlighted. Another thing you can do is compact information. If you have a huge and long copious note that you only need a few things from, take a new sheet of paper and just copy down what you need. Copying out key ideas is a great technique for remembering things and it focuses on what you need so it’s all right there with no excess material. If you can, type out your notes. It takes a little less time for those who don’t like to write out notes. You could also make graphic organizers or a foldable to organize ideas and review sections with heavy content.

Tip #2) Use the resources you’re given

If you have a textbook, a website, a teacher, then you have a resource! Refer back to text and online sources for clarification on subjects you maybe didn’t understand, but especially ask questions! You’ve spent a whole semester with your teacher and you know they don’t bite! Even if they do, they are required to answer your questions, so ask! It’s no good walking into an exam having a question, and then having the answer to your question be the topic for that last huge long answer question! That being said, your textbook is very resourceful. If you have one for a class, look in it first and make sure the answer to your question isn’t already in there before you ask a teacher. Most of the time, your textbook will have exactly what you need to know. Also, this might go without saying, but your past tests are useful resources as well! This way you can see specifically what you got wrong and spend a little more study time on certain topics.

Tip #1) Don’t leave it to the last minute

There is no way that you’ll cram a whole semester’s worth of information into your brain at ten o’clock the night before exams. Especially not four classes worth. That’s why you’ve got to keep a schedule. Whatever exam you have first, prepare for it first; and so on. Try and determine what class you need to spend the most time on. For different subjects, varying amounts of time can be spent studying for them. You may just need two nights to go over practice questions for your math exam, but you may also need five study sessions to prepare for that English essay! It depends for each person. Just make sure to allot your time accordingly. How you divide your study time is extremely important in the success you’ll have in different subjects. If there is more than enough time then you can take breaks, like working out, and have a more stress free study session, which means a more stress free exam experience.

It’s a lot, everyone who’s been there knows. If there is anything you truly need to know, it’s that exams are not that bad! If you’ve never had a high school exam before, meaning all you first semester grade nines, do not worry! As was mentioned before, panicking does not help in any way, shape, or form! The best thing is these tips apply to all the exams you’ll have in high school, from first to second semester. So relax, get your books out, sit down at a nice comfy desk, and start studying!

Gillian Mayo

Peer Helper