Thursday, October 9, 2008

What Smart Students Know

Principle #1: Nobody Can Teach You as Well as You Can Teach Yourself
Because you know this, you control any learning situation. While teachers tell you what you have to learn, how you learn that material is your business. You adapt situations to your learning needs, not the other way around. No teacher, no matter how gifted or dedicated, knows how you think and process information better than you do.

Principle #2: Merely Listening to Your Teachers and Completing Their Assignments is NEVER Enough
Because you know this, you do whatever it takes to learn the material in a course. Think of your teachers and assignments as the framework around which true personalized learning is built. You are constantly on the lookout for new and better sources of information and new and better ways to learn.

Principle #3: Not Everything You Are Assigned to Read or Asked to Do Is Equally Important
Because you know this, you set priorities and plan ahead. You budget your time and focus on the most important tasks on your agenda. And you apply this principle to your studying as well. You know the value of concentrating your learning efforts on the most important aspects of a course rather than becoming overwhelmed by trying to absorb everything.

Principle #4: Grades Are Just Subjective Opinions
Because you know this, you don't get overly upset with bad grades (or overly excited by good ones). Besides, you're not in it for the grades (Principle #11). Since grades are important, you also make it a point to get to know the personal likes, dislikes, and biases of the person who decides them--your teacher. But doing the best you possibly can--mastering a subject to the best of your ability--is your true goal.

Principle #5: Making Mistakes (and Occasionally Appearing Foolish) is the Price You Pay for Learning and Improving
And it's a price you're more than willing to pay. In the learning process, mistakes are as important as successes. Young children have a nearly unlimited aptitude for learning owing to their willingness to make mistakes. Observe them some time.

Principle #6: The Point of a Question Is to Get You to Think--NOT Simply to Answer It
Because you know this, you are always looking for different perpectives, different answers, and different methods to solve problems. You see questions as challenges, not threats, and you approach obvious answers with skepticism.

Principle #7: You're in School to Learn to Think for Yourself, Not to Repeat What Your Textbooks and Teachers Tell You
Because you know this, you take nothing at face value. You question everything, especially authority and most especially yourself. Only through constant challenging and reaching beyond limitations does anyone learn anything of significance.
Principle #8: Subjects Do Not Always Seem Interesting or Relevant, But Being Actively Engaged in Learning Them Is Better Than Being Passively Bored and Not Learning Them
Because you know this, you are willing, even eager, to learn things that other students might find boring. Few things are boring to you. You may not be interested in the subject, but you are always interested in your questions about it. If you are bored or distracted in class, you realize it means you aren't learning--and you do something about it. You know that learning is an ongoing dialogue and investigation, and that you must uphold your end or discovery comes to a screeching halt.
Principle #9: Few Things Are as Potentially Difficult, Frustrating, or Frightening as Genuine Learning, Yet NOTHING Is So Empowering
Again, it's a price you're more than willing to pay. Learning does not end when the bell rings or you grab your diploma. It literally is the stuff of life. The alternative to questioning, grasping, and moving forward every day of your life is much more restful but far less exciting and gratifying. It takes courage and hard work to tackle the unknown, but each time you do it will be easier and less frightening--and soon you'll be hooked.

Principle #10: How Well You Do in School Reflects Your Attitude and Your Method, Not Your Ability
Because you know this, you don't take academic mistakes or disappointments personally. There's nothing wrong with you; it's just your attitude or method that needs adjusting. The material is the material; there will always be something you don't understand. You are what is constantly changing. Once you begin to see all classes and topics as withing your control, you can work on fine-tuning what you must do to master them.

Principle #11: If You're Doing It for the Grades or for the Approval of Others, You're Missing the Satisfaction of the Process and Putting Your Self-esteem at the Mercy of Things Outside Your Control
Because you know this, you work hard for yourself first. Of course it's nice to get good grades and to impress those who care about you. But that can't be why you work so hard. You work hard and you excel because it makes you feel good, and because you realize that you alone will live with the consequences of your education. Praise is great but its flip side is disapproval, which can derail learning and undermine your sense of yourself and your abilities. As a smart student, you know that true gratification--like true learning--is something that comes from within.

Principle #12: School Is a Game, But It's a Very Important Game
Because you know this, you keep everything in perspective. Even though you know that a lot of what goes on at school has nothing to do with learning, you play the game anyway. And you play to win.

(by Adam Robinson)

Keep stress at bay, say VCE old hands

Keep stress at bay, say VCE old hands

Ben Haywood
VCE exam guide, The Age -- Monday, September 8, 2008

Ben Haywood gets some tips on performing well during the exams.

NO MATTER what your subjects, there is one question all students face in the lead-up to their VCE final exams: What is the best way to prepare?

According to those who faced the exams last year, getting organised is a good place to start.

Erin Doherty, who did year 12 at Cranbourne Secondary College, says organisation isn't his strong suit, but he eased into a routine without a great deal of planning.

"My study wasn't as structured as many other people's," he says. "For me, it was just about getting comfortable with a subject and then leaving that and moving on to one that I didn't feel quite so comfortable with.

"So I would just spend maybe a night on one subject and then move to the next."

Even with an ENTER of 95.8, Erin missed out on his first preference of a double degree in mechatronics and science at Monash University. Instead, he is doing a mechanical engineering/science double degree.

But his good result did win him the lucrative Schools Access Monash scholarship: a fully paid five-year course of his choice at the university.

For Deakin University arts student Siobhan Simper, a structured approach was important for keeping stress at bay. The Brauer College alumnus, who got 98.1 last year, split study for her five subjects across weekdays, tackling any extra tasks at the weekend. Very often, that left her weekends free.

"Then I could relax because I knew that I was preparing the best I could," she says.

First-year University of Melbourne bachelor of environments student Jessica King says keeping good notes throughout the year paid off in the months before the exams.

"When it came down to the last couple of months I started making posters of all my notes and put them all around my room," says the former Sacred Heart Girls' College student, who got 98.2 last year.

Because his notes were "a bit everywhere", Erin instead relied on textbooks and summary notes from revision lectures.

"Revision lectures were really good because they made me feel comfortable with what I did and didn't know.

"They summarised the whole subject and helped me identify areas I was a bit vague with."

They gave him a fresh perspective on subjects, too.

"I also did as many practice exams as possible. They really help you identify what you need to know and what your weaknesses are.

"If you can't answer a question, you go back to that topic and go through it again." He also recommends first confronting the topics you find hardest.

"Leaving the hard things that you really don't want to do and only doing the things you really like doing is probably the worst thing. It just sticks in the back of your mind and gets to you."

Jessica agrees that putting off things to the last minute only adds to stress.
She says leaving her most intense study to the days before the exams left her with little time to find answers to things she didn't know.

"That makes you feel really stressed out."

For Naomi Johnson, who is studying music at the University of Melbourne, flash cards were a fun way to memorise facts on the move, particularly for LOTE.

Speaking to her family in the languages she was studying - French and Korean - helped too. "They didn't understand anything, but they would still respond to it and ask me questions."

Jessica also put her family to work, getting them to quiz her on key knowledge.

"I found that if I did it with friends, they would just tell me the answers, but I could get a much more realistic sense of how I was doing from people who didn't know about the subject area." In the final days before an exam, most argue that less is more.

"If I had studied close to the exams I would have panicked, because I'd have realised what I didn't know," Siobhan says.

Naomi, who got 99.35 at Strathcona Baptist Girls Grammar, agrees. "Instead of study, I tried to open my mind to the possibilities of the subject," she says. "For example, with the literature exam, instead of trying to read over the revision notes, I just went out into the garden and read through the poems, and really immersed myself in the feel of them rather than trying to pick up on something specific.

"If you think of your mind as a filing cabinet, instead of frantically opening up all the drawers and riffling through all the pages, it is almost like working out which drawers are important to you and putting a ribbon around them and saying, 'I know it's all in there, it will be fine, and when I need it, it will come flying out'."

As for exam day nerves, Siobhan says it is worth putting the exams into perspective.

"Someone said to me at the start of the year that you're not your ENTER, and I think looking back that is really true and I should have paid more attention."

-Source: http://www.education.theage.com.au/pagedetail.asp?intpageid=2036&intsectionid=11

http://www.education.theage.com.au/vce.asp
 
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