Some of you will be on the modular courses in which you sit examinations at regular intervals and some will be on the do or die courses in which everything depends on the results of the final examinations at the end of your course. Whichever you are on, there are a number of things you can do to make sure you get the best grade you possibly can. As a teacher I have seen time and again students turning up to examinations (examinations that will affect the rest of their lives) with no calculator, no ruler, only one pen etc. And some of them even arrive late without good reason.
All this indicates a very poor attitude and these people are often the ones who have not bothered to revise very much either.
The fact that you are subscribed to this blog tells me that you are unlikely to be in this group, but even so you might not be sure how to proceed or you might make a serious mistake without realising it. For example, many students stay up far too late on the night before an examination revising, thinking that they can cram in that last fact or two that is going to make all the difference to their results. What actually happens is that they turn up for the examination far too tired to produce their best work and, particularly in mathematics, they cannot get their head around problems that they would normally find quite easy to tackle. If you begin your revision early enough you will know just about everything you need to know to tackle the papers efficiently.
So here are some general guidelines that I hope you will find helpful:
1. Download the GCSEMathematics4U Revision Guide which gives you good advice about how to separate the planning of revision from the revision itself and shows you how to tackle revision in small sections in a non-stressful way. If you follow this advice you will be surprised at how much extra work you will cover compared to that of other students and what a head start that will give you!
2. Make sure you get a fair bit of exercise. If you are a fitness fanatic you will be doing this already, but if you are a bit of a couch potato who spends far too long on your computer playing with Facebook, then put it away and get some exercise instead. Do what you like to do. Whether it is just a walk, a run, a game of tennis - it doesn't matter. The point is that exercise puts oxygen in your brain and that helps with the thinking process, so do some between your revision sessions. It's obvious really, but it's surprising how many people don't do it. And try to get a little exercise just before an examination too. A quick walk around the block or walking the last kilometre to school will put enough oxygen in your brain to give you a burst of intellectual energy during the examination.
3. Revise with a partner if you can. When I was taking my last examinations at Uni, a friend and I 'borrowed' a blackboard from a store cupboard and set it up in my room. We had many sessions together working through problems and I know it helped us both. When one was stuck, the other could help. We could discuss in detail why our method worked instead of just being happy with getting the answer right. This helped us with other similar problems, of course.
4. Make sure you have all the right equipment. I shall have more to say about calculators in particular in a later posting, but please remember that mathematics is a subject that needs equipment (like a good ruler with no dents along the edges!), so make sure you have yours all in good condition.
5. On the night before an examination, by all means look up a fact or two that are worrying you, but don't do any more than that. Make sure you get a good night's sleep - that will help you far more than anything else.
And lastly (and this is a point I shall mention in these posting more than once) remember this:
If you only do what everyone else is doing, you will only achieve what everyone else achieves. If you want to get a higher grade, you need to do that bit more. Unfortunately, most people only realise this far too late in life. Please don't be one of those people!
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