Exam time - but how do you actually do an exam?!?!?

Its that time of the year. Lower Sixth finished today. Year 11 started GCSEs today. The lower school are starting to think about their end of year exams. Its revision time.

I spent some time today discussing exam technique with my Year 12s and I got the feeling that this isn't a conversation they have had many times before.


I tried to explain how to split a maths exam into three parts:

Part One: Read the question carefully and fully. If you can "just do it" then go ahead. If you have to take a moment to get your brain firing the correct impulses then take it. The moment you need to sit back and think about how to answer the question then you are wasting time, and exam time is precious, so move on to the next question. Do this until you have gone through the entire paper.

Part Two: Time to think. Think hard. Close your eyes and take yourself back to the classroom or your study. Picture the notes, the way you've answered these types of question before. Pick the problem apart. Can you contextualise it? Can you imagine it? Now you've done the questions you can just do its time for the ones you need to think about. Watch the time. Use it wisely. Don't waste 30 minutes on one question if you have a few to go back and look at.

Part Three: Blag those marks. Are there any questions that you can answer part b without doing part a? If you need part a before doing part b then can you literally make up an answer that you could use? Then maybe you can blag yourself some method marks or error carried forward marks - better than nothing right!?! This is also the time to check your answers. Check for those silly mistakes you tend to make. Have you remembered the minus signs in a binomial expansion? Have you found all the solutions of a trig equation? Have you factorised and simplified correctly? It is so easy to make one or two simple mistakes in an exam situation that you could pick up 2, 3 or more marks by checking your work thoroughly.

So to sum it up, do what you can straight away, go back and think where you need to, go back and blag as many marks as possible. Hopefully you walk out of the exam having used your time efficiently and having answered the questions as well as you can.

Good luck if you are about to sit an exam. Don't panic and don't be late.

Desire to understand.