Easter Holiday Break
04 April 2020
Psychology: I've completed all the set work (Chapters 1 - 5 Notes, Videos, Exercises and Topic Tests) and have Chapter 6 and 7 go before I'm finished AOS2. It's pretty cruisy stuff, but I'm working really slowly like my brain feels half-asleep most of the time, so I think i need to make sure I'm drinking more water and eating more veggies. My plan for this subject is to get all of AOS 1 and 2 checkpoints and topic tests are done by the end of the holidays. I'm finding this subject really really cruisy and I'm finding that the topics super easy to grasp but there's just lots of topics and how they're all interrelated. I'm actually enjoying the subject despite thinking I wouldn't but it's definitely not my fave.
EDIT: First SAC marks back; 84% (not happy about) and Rank 1
To improve this I'm going to make sure I allocate 30 minutes for homework after every class (if 2 classes its 1 hr) and 5 hours of study a week, and obvs that number will increase in the 2 weeks prior to a SAC. During my study, I need to put a lot more focus on practice questions and unit 3 exams.
Biology: I've completed most of AOS2, but I'm being pretty cruisy cause my teacher only set Chapter 8 for holiday homework so the plan for today is to also do Chapter 9 and 10 and do a Unit 3 practice exam. My plan for this subject is to make sure I'm doing a practice exam a week and actually revising. I really love the way the teacher teaches this subject, he's just engaging and understands that talking from a PowerPoint isn't effective teaching. Like we start most classes with a youtube video (if we are starting a topic) or a short Kahoot (if we have started learning stuff). He also allows for multiple directions of learning ie. here's a few different things you can do to consolidate your understanding and gives us the resources to learn in different ways about the same topic, I'm not letting myself get complacent cause I 'know it already' but rather approaching it as if I've never learnt it and doing everything I can do learn as much as I can and really consolidating my understanding with questions.
Further Maths:I'm not sure why but I find FM to be hard to study for, like what do I study? So I'm halfway through Chapter 6 and then I'll do Chapter 7 from the Cambridge book and then do all the Data Analysis questions on Edrolo. I have a SAC in week 2 or term 2 and its a 5 hour SAC where we will be given data to analysis and at the end we have to write a report on it. That's all I know and it's so vague I'm not sure how to study for it. I think there are worksheets on vicmathsnotes so I'll do some of those hopefully by the end of the weekend. I love maths and I do understand it but i feel like the FM course is kinda weird idk if its cause the topics are all new or because its a new exercise every class but i feel like I'm missing something. Like you know when something feels too easy and its cause you're doing ti wrong? that's how i feel with this subject in general.
English: I haven't done much for this subject yet, other than reading and annotate Station Eleven. Tomorrow will be finishing a Language analysis practice SAC that I started on the last day of term. On Monday I'm going to do the 2017 practice exam (but only the text analysis and analyzing argument), and if I'm feeling good do some of the Language analysis exercises in the Pearson English textbook and finish making notes on the LA Edrolo videos. I really love English, despite it being one of my worst subjects and I really want to do well so I really need to be harsh on myself and make sure I'm writing an essay a week and getting it marked by my teachers or by someone else. I truly think that's the only way I will improve and I just need to do it. I enjoy writing essays I just hate starting. So that's probably going to be my biggest goal for the next month is to get into the habit of writing essays, like we are 4 months in and I've written like 3 essays, 2 of which were done in class.
EDIT: Yeah look I haven't got my SAC marks yet but I will not be surprised if its like a D+ or something, like the prompts were so hard and we had never done any work on the themes of anything relating to the prompts. It was really hard to 'go deep' and i had no idea how to discuss the views and values because it was such a weird topic! I'll let you guys know what mark I receive when i get it (I got a C+ on the practice
) but moving forward, I'm going to write a shit tonne of practice essays submit them to my teachers, you guys here, RESN and try and really improve, and hence why English is going to be the subject i study most for, with 7 hours a week scheduled study alongside my 30 min homework blocks. It should work but we'll see
Legal Studies: Similarly to English, his subject has been put to the side for the time being while I work on Psych, Bio and Maths. Next week will predominantly be reviving Edrolo AOS1 for a SAC that's supposed to be held first week of term, and then working through the videos for AOS2. And then I have to work through AOS2 in the textbook up to pg. 170 so basically just stuff on CAV and VCAT. My plan for this subject is to once I've done that do all the checkpoints for AOS1 so I'm really prepared for the upcoming SAC. I love this class, the teacher really pushes us and sets enough work that we can only complete it if we work super diligently in class otherwise its homework. He also sets a fair bit of homework between classes but its general things like summary questions, essays and key terms so it's never too hard. Its probably one of my favourite subjects because the content is fun and interesting and the teacher is really good.
EDIT: First SAC marks: 82% and Rank 3 (such a bad score and i lost so many marks for stupid stupid mistakes, 2% of being equal rank 1 grr) I'm so pissed about this mark, I legit lost like 1.5 marks because one of the questions was like "identify the errors in this" AND I WROTE IN DOT POINT FORM INSTEAD OF FULL SENTENCES and the other 3 marks were lost in the 10 marker for only responding to the first part of the question (I forgot about the second task word) Again I'm just going to really make sure I'm studying consistently and doing lots of practice questions and submitting them to my teacher and RESN.