2015-05-Xx Advice for Preparing for a Final Exam

so you have a final exam in geometry and dont really know what to

do you have to know material from the whole year? how in the world is

that going to be possible? and you have finals in all your classes? yikes!

we can help.

As freshpeople, this whole final exam scene is probably a bit scary and intimidating. It may feel unbelievable

that you are going to be tested on material from a whole year, when youre used to being tested on material

in two or three week periods. First, we should tell you the purpose of final exams. For us teachers, it provides

some time when you can devote your energy to looking at the big picture of geometry, instead of looking at

it in smaller pieces. It allows you to draw connections among things youve learned. And most importantly, it is

a way to check to see if youve retained what youve learned so you can carry on the ideas and skills into

future years. (And if you havent, while preparing you have the opportunity to remediate things you didnt

totally understand!)

For you students, the number one thing you should keep in mind is that you will not be learning an entire

years worth of material when youre studying. You already know a lot of the material. Youve learned it. Take

a moment and silently think if you can do the following: Can you find the distance between two points? Can

you write the equation of a line in point-slope form? Can you say what you know about alternate interior

angles created by two parallel lines cut by a transversal? Can you say what the transformation (x,y)(x,-y)

does to a point? Do you know how to find the sum of the interior angles of hexagon? Do you know if SSS

proves two triangles congruent? What about SSA? Can you prove why the base angles of an isosceles triangle

are congruent? Can you explain why you cant have a triangle with side lengths of 1cm, 2cms, and 50cms?

Although the answer might not be yes for all of the questions, it is probably yeah, I think I could do that

with a little review for most of them. The point is you arent learning the material. You are reviewing the

material, refining what you know, and recommitting some of the forgotten points to memory.

How We Can Help

You may be used to teachers providing a giant packet of practice problems for you to do to help you prepare

for something like this. We wont be doing thisit is important that as a student in the Upper School, you

learn some strategies to prepare on your own. But we absolutely will help you organize yourself, and provide

you with some strategies that will make preparing for finals effective and less-overwhelming.

We will provide you with a PDF with all the topic lists from the entire year

We will provide you with a calendar and suggestions for how to manage your time

We will provide you with advice on how to go about chunking the course, and focusing on little

pieces at a time

We will provide an opportunity for your class to come together to create a comprehensive set of notes

to share with each other

You have a lot of resources to help you with this: each other, your teacher, topic lists and packets, your

textbook, your notebook, smartboards

Suggestions For Managing Your Time

You shouldnt wait to start preparing until classes are over. Our suggestion is to set aside 15 minutes on school

nights, and maybe 30 minutes on Saturday and/or Sunday. These small pieces of time will add up! Think about

English paper due on a specific date. It initially appears overwhelmingtoo big a task to even know how to

start! Waiting until two days before the paper is due to write your paper will not only be insanely stressful, but

it will also likely lead to a less-than-solid paper. If you instead break up the task of writing the paper into

individual manageable tasks (like craft thesis sentence, get feedback on thesis, outline paper, find

evidence for paragraph 1, etc.) it goes from impossibly big to totally do-able! We know procrastination is

tempting and even your teachers have been tempted to let things wait to the last minute but if you can

motivate yourself to start early, you future selves will thank you. Coming up with a plan of attack for a large

project, by breaking it down into smaller bits and accomplishing those, is an important life skill!

When youre working, put your phone and laptop in a different room! And if you plan on working for more

than 25 minutes at a time, take a 5 minute break after each 25 minutes. Your brain needs a break to refresh.

Go for a short walk. Listen to some music. Watch a youtube video. Do 50 jumping jacks. Only then, geometry.

Set up a calendar which has your study schedule specifically worked out and stick to it! This calendar should

have your assessments (for this class and other classes) on it, as well as your goals for each day. It should be

specific with what you plan on covering. An example is provided on the next page but only filled in for a few

weeks so you can get a sense of what it could look like. We want you to design a schedule that makes sense

for you, and that incorporates your assessments/work in other classes. It may look overwhelming at first, but

remember that many of the tasks are a mere 15 minutes less than half an episode of the Simpsons!

We will provide you with a blank (digital) calendar to fill in. You may want to use different colors for different

classes.

Most importantly: Be realistic with the amount of time you can devote, and make sure youre getting a good

amount of sleep each night (8 hours minimum)!

A Sample Study Calendar

Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday

May 4 Make sure all materials at home are arranged chronologically by date (20 minutes)

May 5 Come up with a study plan and fill in calendar (20 minutes) Prepare for In Class Test (20 minutes)

May 6 Prepare for In Class Test (45 minutes)

May 7 (In Class Test) Go through topic lists and mark know kinda know dont know (20 minutes)

May 8 Study Unit 1 and Unit 2 and make practice test (30 minutes)

May 9 Continue studying Unit 1 and Unit 2 and make practice test (30 minutes)

May 10 Take practice test on Unit 1 and Unit 2 and score (30 minutes)

May 11 Shore up understanding on Unit 1 and Unit 2 based on practice test (15 minutes)




May 15 Take practice test on Unit 3 and Unit 4 and score (30 minutes)

May 16 Shore up understanding on Unit 3 and Unit 4 based on practice test (15 minutes) Study Unit 5 and Unit 6 and make practice test (15 minutes)





May 21 (In Class Test) Take practice test on Unit 5 and Unit 6 and score (30 minutes)

May 22 In Class Review Day

May 23

May 24

May 25 Memorial Day (No School)

May 26

May 27 Review Day in Class

May 28 Review Day in Class

May 29 (no class due to Awards Chapel)

May 30 May 31

June 1 June 2 June 3

Math Final

What Does Studying Look Like?

There are many ways to study. We have a few suggestions that might work for you.

Organize your materials for the year by date/unit. If youre missing a packet, download a blank copy

from the course conference so you have it.

Make a study calendar! Stick to it!

For each topic list, make sure you fill in the know kinda know and dont know boxes and make

sure you focus on the kinda know and dont know topics. (You should briefly review the know

topics to make sure you truly do know them, however.)

For the kinda know and dont know topics, try to match that topic with the problems from the

packets, the textbook, and the do nows from the start of class. Heres an example from the Topic List

on Rotations:

4. Given a figure and a center of rotation, can you draw a new figure that has undergone a 90 degree rotation?

What about a 180 degree rotation?

Extra Practice with Centers of Rotation: Problem #2

Extra Extra Extra Practice with Centers of Rotation: Problems #7a and #7b

For each unit, try to think of the big ideas and then see how all that we learned stemmed from the

big ideas. One example might be perpendicular bisectors acted both as a line of reflection and a set of

equidistant points for any two points, which made them useful because then we could

Just reading over things and saying I get that I get that I didnt get that, but now that Ive read that,

Im good isnt effective preparation. Its like reading a book on the beach versus reading a book for

deep understanding. With the latter, youre actively engaging with the book annotating, thinking,

taking notes. To actively study math, you need to actually do problems. Remember we have posted all

the packets on the course conference (organized by date!), so you should print out any blank packets

you want and rework problems!

You should create a practice test by writing down problems youve done (from the textbook or

packets) and next to the problem write the packet name or book page. Take this practice test but

only after you havent thought about geometry for a while it should be a check to see what youve

retained. Take it in a testing condition no distractions, no breaks, no referring to notes even if you get

stuck. And then, since youve written down where the problems were from, you can quickly check if

you were right or not after you take it.

Studying alone has its benefits peacefulness, the ability to work at your own pace, and focus are

three. However there are huge benefits to forming a study group. Besides having other people working

with you which can motivate you to keep on studying you also have other people who can help you

when you get stuck, and who you can help when they are stuck. That back-and-forth is really powerful!

For a study group to be effective, you should probably have only two or three people in it, and you

should find people who you know you can actually work well with instead of having your study

session devolve into a session about how sad you are that Zayn left One Direction. It may help by

focusing each session on at most two topic lists.

Make notecards (see next section for more on that)

The Class Working Together Collectively To Break Down Each Unit (Notecard Topics)

In order to help yall, we have made a way for yall to help each other. We have a spreadsheet (the link will be

put up on the course conference) for you guys to fill in. You and a partner are each going to use the topic lists,

the packets, and the textbook to break down each unit with big ideas, formulas and their derivation,

theorems and proofs, and vocabulary/definitions.

You arent writing anything extensive just enough to have outlined the units. An example of what this looks

like is below. (These examples span the multiple years however you will be writing yours based on a specific

topic list.)

Once each unit has been broken down in this way, the spreadsheet will be fully populated. And although you

will only be filling in two units, yall will collectively have created another resource to help you study. (We are

not including the last two units on trigonometry and area in this spreadsheet.)

One important caveat: We are setting up this spreadsheet for you. But we expect it to be a for you, by you

project. So we are not going to be looking at your work to see if youve missed something or written

something incorrectly. You should do a good job for yourself and for your classmates!

So now there is a spreadsheet with a bunch of ideas from each unit. What should you do with this

spreadsheet?

We highly suggest using this collaboratively created resource to create notecards for the topics you struggle

with. You should probably use large notecards so you can fit a lot of information/diagrams on them.

For example, if you have trouble with remembering/proving the sum of the interior angles of an n-gon, you

should make a notecard for that and then you can use that to study. On the front of the notecard, you

should write something like The sum of the interior angles of an n-gon. On the back of the notecard, you

should have the formula, the derivation of the formula, and a practice problems/solution (where you highlight

the tricky parts).

The mere act of creating the notecards is a useful exercise when studying.

2015-05-Xx Advice for Preparing for a Final Exam

Documents

Transcript of 2015-05-Xx Advice for Preparing for a Final Exam