The biggest challenge for students when it comes to exams is NOT:
Trying to revise all the content (that’s important, but it’s not the TOP one).
Finishing the paper in the time given without having to rush and scribble through the last few Qs (common, but, still not the biggest challenge).
And it’s NOT
!
Because, the biggest challenge is likely the thing your son or daughter isn’t even AWARE of.
(That’s what makes it so frustrating. Like wondering why the kettle hasn’t boiled, then realising it was never plugged in at the wall).
The reason so many students fail to get the grades they could in exams is because they aren’t savvy in knowing what level of cognition the Q is operating at and therefore what detail and elements are required in their response.
Watch me explain how this all works for three (well, it’s really gonna be two – you’ll see why) high level exam Qs.
> Here’s a copy of the exam Qs so you can properly follow along (copyright QCAA – not great quality photos, by me)!
If your teen’s ever uttered the words ‘what’s even the point of exams?’ (or maybe you have too!)
then listen in,
because if we consider exams as just a thing to be passed to get the grades for whatever lies ahead in life, then we’re missing out on some hidden opportunities.
Don’t worry – I’m not gonna try to convert you into some sort of exam board cult,
I just want to give you a positive angle to consider.
Because, yes, exams are partly a tool to judge ability in a subject or a skill,
they do test knowledge of whatever topics are being assessed.
But what if they really were more useful than that?
Because here’s what else exams are:
They’re a test of being able to decipher what people are really asking for.
The information or skills the examiners or teachers want students to show.
In fact I had a savvy parent actually say this to me a few years ago…
Her son was doing the 10Wk Grade Transformation Program and she’d watched some of Catapult 7 with him, which dives deep on one of the 6 elements of exam technique.
And she told me that it really isn’t much different to what she has to do at work.
From what her clients tell her, she has to work out what they want, exactly what they’re asking for and then translate that into what she proposes or provides for them.
So, maybe exams do have some real-world application after all.
Maybe they do actually have some purpose and skills that translate and serve us beyond the exam hall and results day.
Because if students can become masters of working out what people want from the words they use and get brilliant at giving them exactly what they want,
in a clear and efficient way,
then that’s sure to serve them well in life and their career, right?
So, here’s how I choose to see exams:
– Yes, they demand good subject knowledge.
– Yes, they require certain skills, like source analysis skills or numeracy skills for example.
– But beyond that, they require an ability to dissect the wording of questions,
– and be able to understand and act on that information,
– to provide a response that fulfils the needs and wants of each question.
This is why, as you’ll have heard me say before, all the subject knowledge in the world is useless if your teen doesn’t have the tools and strategies to do those things.
And it’s why so many hardworking and intelligent students still don’t get the results they deserve to get,
the grades they could and should be getting in their exams.
So, maybe there is more to exams than just testing subject knowledge.
Maybe they actually are useful for later life.
And maybe they’re about teaching students more than just learning and memorising facts and info.
I’d love your thoughts and feedback on this. And if you know someone else who could benefit from this perspective, then feel free to forward this to them or share the link on social.
There’s a lot of debate in the media and within education about exams and assessment.
What’s the point of it?
How can we make it more effective and less stressful for students?
Is testing and the traditional exam system even relevant for the world today?
Well, I’m not going to get into that debate as such right now, but I do want to share one point of view that I hope will be useful…
The way I see it, whether or not people are happy with it,
exams are here to stay for the foreseeable future.
And whilst there’s development in how we TEACH the subject content and understanding how students – in fact how ANYONE – learns best,
the way we test and structure exams hasn’t changed much.
And there is no realistic discussion right now about scrapping Year 12 exams for those following the academic routes and ATAR.
So, if we accept that,
then we might as well view exams in a productive and positive light.
So I want to offer a way to do that:
First we need to understand that getting great results in exams is about much more than learning and regurgitating information.
Yes, subject knowledge is important,
but what’s equally important is the ability to decipher what a question is really asking and at what cognitive level.
And by cognitive level, I mean what level of detail and depth. For example a question that asks your teen to define, say, food hygiene, is quite different to a question that asks them to explain the importance of food hygiene.
Or a question that asks for a description of a painting or artwork, requires a much lower level response than one which asks your teen to analyse that artwork.
One example where students fall into this trap is with novel or movie analyses.
They often end up simply describing the storyline or the characters, rather than analysing the techniques that have gone into these and how they relate to a certain theme or purpose.
So how does this make exams useful?
Well, it could be argued that knowing the symbolism an author has used to portray a theme in a novel isn’t going to be that relevant in later life,
it’s not going to serve students particularly well in writing a job application or carrying out there job (whatever tasks that could involve)
being able to serve clients,
or write a funding grant,
or following a set of instructions.
The actual subject content and knowledge and understanding required may not be that useful.
It can be interesting, and it can show an ability to think and operate at a certain level,
but useful in a practical sense – not really.
But the skill of being able to work out what is wanted and needed is going to be super useful.
Knowing how to figure out what people want and then how to give it to them in the most effective and efficient way is extremely useful and can serve your teen in so many ways.
Whether they work for a boss and need to fulfil their demands,
whether they are serving clients and customers,
whether they run their own business or projects and need to create products and services,
or if they’re applying for funding and grants for a charity or not-for-profit organisation.
So, I hope this waves a little sprinkle of positivity over exams.
If we’re accepting that they’re a part of most students’ lives, then we might as well consider them as positively as possible and focus on the ways they can serve and help students today.
This way, the exam technique skills they learn and hone to tackle them,
like identifying command words,
knowing exactly how to respond to them
and properly understanding mark schemes and rubrics, well, these will not only serve them amazingly well for their exams
but will also be in place for whatever lies ahead beyond those exams too.
Leave me a comment below – I’d love to know what plans or dreams has your teen got for their future
and how could the skills of getting to grips with what’s wanted and knowing how to provide it – help them succeed in that as well as their exams?
When it comes down to it, there’s one mark difference between grade boundaries.
Just one mark can make the difference between a D and C grade, one mark between a B and an A grade. Therefore one word can make the difference between a grade, as one word in an answer can mean getting or losing a mark. I’ve talked about this when tackling compare and contrast Qs before.
And this is why I’m a big believer in ‘every little helps’.
Because one little tip, one strategy, one minute of revision of one fact that’s asked in an exam, can make a whole grade’s difference.
I’ve been making a point lately to recommend to my personal coaching students that they do just one or two questions for practise and revision each day because many of them have Term 3 exam blocks in a few weeks.
We’ve been coming up with some specific plans for them based on their personal priority points and your teen can do this for themselves too.
For example in Maths, putting in place a daily bare minimum over the school holidays, to do just one or two Maths practise Qs on top of any other study (or on top of their relaxation!).
That’s perhaps 14 questions over two weeks of a school holiday.
Which would be approximately two or three questions per topic for a term’s worth of content.
Two questions on every topic is just about enough to keep everything fresh in their mind and not let anything become totally buried so that it has to be dug out from the depths come revision for exams.
Or… how about we make this REALLY easy and a long term plan.
How about in Y11 and 12, making one revision card per week, and doing one practise exam Q per week?
Not a whole practise paper, just one practise question. That’s maybe 15mins for the revision card, and 10 mins for the practise Q. That’s just 25 mins once a week. If they’re a morning person, that’s getting up at 6am instead of 6.30 on just one day, or that’s one less episode of a TV program just once a week.
That’s going to give them 46 revision cards if we don’t count the summer holidays, over the course of one year and 46 practise Qs completed.
And that’s a LOT of revision resources at the ready, a lot of exam practise and familiarity with exam Qs and that equals a lot of potential extra marks in an exam 🙂 #winning
I’d love for you to have a think about what one little thing could be done once per day, or once per week.
It won’t feel like a lot on it’s own, but add it up and it can make a big difference.
And then let me know in the comments below – what is the one small thing and what big result would it give?
I’ll see you next week, let’s go make this a fantastic week.
If your teen’s ever had an exam Q that’s involved a graph, chart, diagram or stats of some sort,
reading from it, or drawing it, then THIS is for you.
It’s probably THE most specific bit of exam advice ever.
And it’s important I share it because:
it’s part of the marking criteria for these types of Qs,
and yet
so many students are unaware of it, or are simply overlooking it.
I shared this tip (more like vital instruction!) at a school workshop with a Year 12 cohort and on the drive home decided I had to share it more widely.
Here’s ‘exactly’ what it is…
It’s a two steps forward, one step back affair at the moment (literally!).
And we realised (after a ‘help!’ email to our dog trainer!) that we’re just trying to do too much ‘fun stuff’ without having the basics TOTALLY nailed.
Makes sense. (We’ll put the Australia’s Got Talent application away for now then) 😉
And it might be the same for your teen.
Check out the ‘basics’ they might be leaving behind in pursuit of the higher grades (and of course, how they can get any missing parts of their foundations filled in)!
Being good at something and being comfortable with it is certainly no bad thing.
However, being ‘good’ or being comfortable, can stop us from pushing ourselves and therefore prevents us from becoming GREAT. It means we won’t work harder or do more and we don’t therefore discover how brilliant we could be… How awesome things COULD be.
Being good at something can actually be the thing that stops us becoming great at something.
What on earth am I talking about? I’ll explain all in this video.
I’m Katie Price – Grade Transformation Expert, and as a student I was in the ‘good’ category pretty much across the board.
I got mostly As and Bs, in my subjects – not without a lot of work though. I was decent at sport – always made it into the B teams for the sports I played (and sometimes got a shot in the A teams – I was the one who’d get bumped up if an A team player was away) and socially, I would be the odd Vice-captain of something on the odd occasion. So generally good, never terrible, but never GREAT. Mostly ,I blended in and was totally okay with ALL of that.
If this is anything like your teen, OR if they’re kinda cruising or staying happily in their comfort zone right now, then this message is definitely for you.
Being good at something and being comfortable with it is certainly no bad thing.
However, what I’ve noticed – ONLY once I’ve gotten older and experienced moments of growth as well as moments of struggle and major challenges – is that being ‘good’ or being comfortable – can stop us from pushing ourselves and therefore prevents us from becoming GREAT.
It means we won’t work harder or do more and we don’t therefore discover how brilliant we could be. How awesome things COULD be.
Now – this isn’t any major revelation… it’s really a THING and so many coaches, authors and well, pretty much everyone who studies or teaches human behaviour and psychology in any way have laid this out clearly for years. But it’s something I’ve been hearing about more and more from parents, and like I said earlier, it’s something I can definitely relate to in my own life and decisions and in others around me.
Cruising means we’re not pushing ourselves. And I certainly wouldn’t say I was cruising as a student, but I did realise just how much more I could push myself when I once got a D in an exam…Argh!
It was my first major exam of A-Level Maths – the equivalent of Maths Methods or Advanced Mathematics depending on your state over here. And it was certainly a big jump from the GCSE level Maths I’d gotten an A in previously.
And that D freaked me out!
I started going to all the extra lunch time tutorials, did extra practise Qs for homework and basically levelled up my study. Because I was a little concerned that that could happen in my other subjects too. I pushed myself harder than I ever had before because I was suddenly uncomfortable.
And you may well have seen this happen in aspects of your own or your teen’s life. It takes something that makes us UNcomfortable to make us change or take action.
I bet you’ve had that situation in the car, where we experience a hairy moment or a near-miss when we’re driving, and suddenly we’re paying super-close attention to EVERY car, pedestrian and road sign for the rest of the journey. That dodgy moment made us uncomfortable and made us focus and concentrate harder straight afterwards.
My mum used to be a smoker and had tried giving up heaps of times, until her best friend – also a smoker – was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. One week later, my mum had given up smoking and hasn’t smoked a cigarette since.
If a situation isn’t GOOD – it FORCES us to take action, to work harder or to seek help or do something about it. To become great at whatever will help us overcome or avoid that situation.
Which is why many parents come to me or enrol their teen in my 10Wk Program, when they’re struggling in some way or with some aspect of their study and need to take action to get good or become great at the things that are holding them back.
AND it’s why I get especially excited for those students and parents who get on board when they’re NOT uncomfortable and they’re already doing pretty well – BUT they’re either keen to see how much better they could be. They know that they COULD be GREAT rather than GOOD if they just had some of the skills, techniques and know-how that I teach.
So if your teen’s currently a little uncomfortable or facing challenges in any aspect of their study – assignments, essay-writing, exams, note-taking, researching or just being organised, motivated and efficient….
I explained in my previous blog the exact reasons why students struggle so much with the highest cognitive performance ‘Evaluation’ level essay titles and exam questions.
(And the fact that these are the Qs that every student should be perfecting because:
1 >> they’re worth the most marks, and 2 >> they give students access to the highest marking criteria in rubrics).
So that’s why this week, I’m giving you a very specific strategy to help your teen deal with those high level ‘Evaluation’ essays and exam Qs.
I’m letting you in on the EXACT words that’ll help ANY student: – make sense of these Qs,
– know exactly what they’re really asking
AND
– be able to clearly and easily structure a response accordingly.
Which exam questions and essay titles do students dread the most?
The ones that are also (unfortunately for those students) almost always worth the most marks?
Yep, it’s those Qs right at the top of the pyramid of Bloom’s Taxonomy and Marzano’s Taxonomy – the evaluation level Qs.
And I explained in my previous blog the exact reasons why students struggle so much with these types of essay titles and exam questions.
So, if you haven’t already watched that, then I’d recommend you check that out HERE,
because this week I’m going to give you a specific strategy to help your teen deal with those high level ‘Evaluation’ essays and exam Qs.
So stick around because I’m letting you in on the EXACT words that’ll help ANY student:
– make sense of these Qs,
– know exactly what they’re really asking
AND
– be able to structure a response accordingly.
So, if you watched my last video, you’ll know how evaluation Qs are worded and that they require students to make a JUDGEMENT.
Here’s the strategy for how to do that in words, on paper:
They need to consider or turn the wording of the Q into
– TO WHAT EXTENT –
and craft their essay or answer around that.
Examples:
So, instead of “evaluate the experiment” – turn it into:
To what extent was the experiment accurate and reliable?
Instead of “Y leader was influential in X event. Discuss” – turn it into:
To what extent did Y leader influence X event?
Or change “assess the success of the director in persuading the audience to agree with their point of view “– change it to:
To what extent was the director successful in persuading the viewer to agree with their message, or understand their point of view?
“And how do you answer THAT?” I hear you ask.
Well, given that wording, now their thesis statement or key point to focus on will be one of 3 responses of:
Yes / totally / very successfully.
(Depending on the wording or topic of the Q)
– and then here are the reasons why and supporting evidence …
OR
2. No / not at all / or was not successful – and here’s why… (reasons and supporting evidence)
OR
3. To some extent – and here are the two sides of the argument.
So in summary, responding successfully to these types of questions involves 2 key things:
>>> Changing the wording or considering the Q to be a ‘to what extent’ question,
and then
>>> Responding in one of those 3 ways – yes, totally, and here’s why – no, not at all, and here’s why, or to some extent and here are the two sides
I know this is a very practical and actionable specific strategy, (probably one of the best that I’ve given away for free!) so if you know others who might also find this tip useful, please feel free to share this video – forward the email, share the video link, post it on social media… and until next week, let’s make this a fantastic week!
**** If your teen would LOVE all the quick and practical, immediately actionable strategies to get them writing quality essays and exam answers, smoothly, confidently and successfully, then you definitely need to check out my 10 Week Grade Transformation Program!
What do you get if you cross the most dreaded type of exam Q with the one type of Q that’s almost always worth the most marks?
Nope, that was not the start of a joke – I’m useless at telling jokes. And that would be a pretty dull joke, right?
I’m talking about a real combo that crops up in exams way too often for many students.
Here’s what it is and why these Qs are so dang tough!
(Just a heads up: There’s a lot I want to cover on this, so this is part one of two videos I’m going to do on this – so be sure to look out for the second one next week!)
For most students – or at least those who haven’t been through my exam technique training 😉
– this isn’t a good combo.
Because, who wants a situation where the one type of Q you don’t feel confident in,
the one type of Q you DON’T want to come up,
not only does actually crop up (pretty commonly) but also is worth a BIG chunk of marks on the paper.
And I can tell you, I was pretty clueless on how exactly to respond to these Qs when I was a student too.
You might’ve guessed what I’m talking about, because I’ve talked about these Qs before.
They’re right at the top of the pyramid of Bloom’s Taxonomy and Marzano’s Taxonomy. They are the evaluation level Qs.
Go and check out my Blog entitled ‘Look out – these Qs are super common’ if you’d like to hear more about where and just how much they’re cropping up across all subjects right now.
But today, I want to explain WHY these Qs are so tough.
It’s not just because this is a command at the top end of cognitive processing.
Although that is the case and does in itself make these common high end exam Qs a challenge.
But, in the eyes of students, it’s because the wording of them just sounds so open or vague.
Or at least they do on first appearances OR if you don’t have a specific strategy and proven structure to tackle them.
These are the questions that just give a statement and then say – ‘discuss’.
Just that word, ‘discuss’, sends students into waffle mode, or worse, total mind-blank.
These are also the Qs that start with the words: ‘To what extent’… or ‘Assess’…
They may even have the word evaluate in them, like ‘Evaluate the success of’….
So students struggle for two main reasons – and over this and my next blog, I’m going to give you the reasons AND solutions to these struggles, so stick with me 🙂
Firstly:
Students aren’t clear on how to identify an evaluate level command in the first place.
They need the training in identifying and making sense of commands and cognitive verbs and the different ways they can be expressed.
One way they can do this is to research Bloom’s taxonomy and then find heaps of example Qs and fit them to each level.
Or, an easier way is to go through Catapults 6 and 7 in my 10 Week Grade Transformation Program 😉
And secondly, even when they figure out that they’re looking at an evaluation level Q, they don’t have a clear strategy to tackle it or a structure to follow in their response.
So, the first thing they need to know is that any evaluation Q or task requires them to make a judgement.
Think about it, look at plenty of examples, and you’ll see this is true for any type of evaluation.
EXAMPLES:
A science evaluation means your teen’s judging how well the experiment went – was their data read or measured accurately, was the methodology correctly carried out, are their results reliable?
Or if they’re evaluating a product in Design Tech– they’re judging how well that product meets the needs and demands of the target audience, how well it meets the specifications.
And to evaluate in the arts subjects, they are judging how well an author or message to the reader for a novel, or artist conveys a certain mood.
Or they’re judging how important a particular leader was in shaping events in History, or judging how effective a particular film technique is in making a documentary appealing or striking to an audience.
Be sure to catch Part 2 of this info in how to deal with those high level Evaluation essays and exam Qs in my next video next week where I’ll give you the EXACT words that’ll help ANY student make sense of these Qs, know exactly what they’re really asking AND be able to structure a response accordingly.
In the mean time, I explain ALL of this and give even more examples and full response templates for all subjects in Catapult 10 of my 10 Week Grade Transformation Program which builds on the Command Words training in the earlier modules and goes into this particular command in detail.
Plus we’ll be diving deep into evaluation level Qs in the Exam Mastery Workshop.
Can’t wait to see your teen in one of those trainings very soon!
Until next week, let’s make this a fantastic week.
