#maths tips

05-11-19

Maths! I’m determined to get at least a seven in my mocks (I got a 5 last year) so I’ve been working really, really hard on it.

hello lovely! funnily enough, it took me so long to reply to this because I have been swamped by my GCSE’s! So for English lit, I’m doing Romeo and Juliet, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and (hence the username) An Inspector Calls.

So as someone in the middle of exams, these are the words of wisdom I share!

- Do take days for yourself - At the start of revision, I took virtually no time off which led to less productivity to when I took say a day off maybe every 4 or 5 days! 10/10 recommend!

- For English, make a spreadsheet for quotes - If you put the quotes along the top and then characters/techniques/setting down the side you can then be prepared for almost any question, and it also makes revision cards with quotes a lot easier!

- Make revision cards for everything as you go along - If it’s early in year 11 or year 10, I know everyone says this but right now, going back and finding revision cards that I’ve previously made is a BLESSING. Seriously, if you have the time - do it!

- For Maths, Use mathsgenie! - Honestly, I am so grateful for this website, specially with the new GCSE. So many complex (not all, yet) complex topics explained in a simple manner. Well worth a look for if you’re missing a topic or are struggling! (http://www.mathsgenie.co.uk/gcse.html)

- Get Inspiration and Tips from YouTube! - There are so many youtubers who have been where  we are now to help with this sort of thing and inspire me everyday, these are a few of my favourites at the moment:-- Ibz Mo - https://www.youtube.com/user/ibstarsns-- Eve Bennett - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCD2h_l6FMIta19ronaayedg-- UnJaded Jade - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4-uObu-mfafJyxxZFEwbvQ-- Holly Gabriel - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUJy393uwl2PTQIMwha8gQg-- Primrose Kitten (Such a good science teacher!) - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBgvmal8AR4QIK2e0EfJwaA

- Lastly, Mark Schemes and Examiners Reports are your friends! - Firstly, for a lot of subjects, once you’ve made your revision notes/cards/etc go through the mark scheme and add/edit your notes according to the mark scheme. Odds are if a question has come up before it may well come up again and the wording is very unlikely to change in the mark scheme.Similarly, Examiners Reports are also worth their weight in gold! They tell you what the examiner is looking for when they mark, and similar to with mark schemes, the style of the question changes very little and so what they want from an answer is also unlikely to change! Please use these two things if nothing else!

Disclaimer: As always, this is a guide on how I like to study maths and how I did well in final exams- but of course doesn't work for everyone! These are only suggestions. ´･ᴗ･`

Mindset- A lot of people dislike maths and a big reason (from experience) is that people believe that it is too hard/ don't understand. The great thing with maths that is different to subjective classes like English- if you know all of your concepts and formulae, you WILL do well. Your mind will help you pull through. Maths in honestly not that difficult. Everything that is hard is really just the concepts you know, in a more creative way.

The Mistake Palm card- Any silly errors you make- put down onto a palm card in terms of topic. For example, on my "Sketching graphs" topic, a mistake I make is not marking the point of inflexion. Things like not forgetting to mark your axes, label a point etc. go here.

The Mistake Word document- your mistakes from practice tests, exams at school and questions you don't know how to solve initially all go on this. Scan/ take a photo and dump it into Word. This is for you to go over a few months later (or before your test) to make sure you know how to do the question! Mine ended up being 20+ for my HSC exam and it definitely helped!

Formulae Palm card- Same as the mistakes palm card, just dump all your formulae and you can carry it around in your pocket to read on the train or wherever you go.

Practice!- Practice papers are the most important thing. Exercises from your textbook are great, but you have to do past papers more so. This is to get familiar with format, tricky questions that could be asked and how fast you can do one.

Study depth, not breadth- Doing question after question from the textbook is not smart studying. A lot of those questions are the same thing but with different numbers so you're not really giving yourself benefit of different formats. A lot of people saying they "study a lot" when they do this but you have to expose yourself to different kinds of questions. Know when to skip questions if you get the concept and to repeat if you don't understand.

Timed Conditions- Practice papers under timed conditions are great at home. Aim to do the whole paper in 80-90% of the time to make sure you have time to check in tests! However in Australia, the HSC exam is 3 hours for mathematics when it only takes 1- 1.5 hours to complete- if you're at home and you finish checking before time is up- just mark it. You're wasting time by waiting for 3 hours when you could do two more tests in that time.

Don't Repeat Papers- Don't repeat papers! Repeat the questions you got wrong. This is because you've seen the questions before, and you know what to do. Try to find more practice papers on the internet instead.

I hope this helped anyone who does Mathematics- this probably works best with HSC since I don't really know how overseas exams work. Thank you!!

Jade

I think videos are the way to go. Here are some good channels which explain the methods in maths:

Khan Academy

Hegarty Maths

Mr Barton Maths

Corbett Maths

I think you’ve got to watch the videos on the topics you don’t understand. Find a youtube channel that you understand and then you can search in their channel for the topic you need. (Khan Academy also has other subjects.) Then try practice questions once you understand it. Maybe for the first few practice questions after watching the video first, do the questions along with the video. Once you sort of get it, try out the practice questions without the video. If you ever get stuck again you can watch the video again.

Videos are great because they’re always there and you can do it along with the person and see how it’s actually done rather than just steps in a method in a textbook.

I did this for my friend to help her with the Pythagoras theorem and I wasn't sure if maybe you guys need it for maths or something. The longest side is always c and it doesn't matter which one you label a or b as long as you do the right formula

a squared + b squared = c squared

You square a and b then add it up

Then square root the number that you got to get c

If you're missing a or b then square root a or b and c then subtract them. Then you square root the number to get either a or b (whichever is missing)