ATAR Notes: Forum
VCE Stuff => VCE Mathematics/Science/Technology => VCE Subjects + Help => VCE Mathematics => Topic started by: Mr Keshy on November 10, 2012, 08:53:38 pm
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So with year 12 head start beginning on Monday, I'm a little confused as to what I should do..
My school uses the Heinemann (if that's how you spell it..) textbook for both Spesh and Methods.. Almost every single person I've spoken to, has had nothing positive to say about it. The book that I've heard most schools use, and for good reason, is the Cambridge Essentials books. I've got the PDF for the Essentials Spesh book and I'll get one for the Methods book as well.
The problem I'm having is how to approach schoolwork and questions..
Could/Should I bring the heinemann one to school and do some basic questions then just ditch it and use the essentials when I actually attempt the greater bulk of the questions?
I know that many might possibly say
(http://i.qkme.me/35x3zp.jpg)
But I'm not too sure on how to go about it.. I want to focus on one book rather than two and perhaps maybe for SAC/Exam revision, do the questions from the heinemann book.
Thoughts?
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My school uses Heinemann as well but its not as good as essential
What my teacher did is: she gives list of ques in Hein textbook, then print for us the ques of Essential, Maths Ques as well. But its LOTS OF homework and we have to finish in 2 nights.
So what I did is: I do a,c,e for ques 1,3,5,etc (because some ques are similar so I skip half :P) in Hein, pick up some ques I like or I think its hard from Essential and Maths Ques
Depending on you anyway, some of my friends do all ques in essential. They said essential was more useful and harder but I'm too lazy to finish every single ques
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I can honestly swear, I never did textbook exercises in Year 12, ever, they're just not similar to VCAA exams. What I did was just do Chapter Reviews, then Checkpoints, then Practice Exams, increases efficiency ten-fold, so that's why I was sleeping, hanging around, going out...etc. when some of my friends were home studying their hearts out, study and work intelligently :P
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Well, whilst I've got nothing on Paul and only took Further which is easy to the point of stupidity, I can attest to the effectiveness of VCAA questions. I kicked back in Math all year, probs expecting around a 37 raw, not really doing too much textbook questions at all (half the time I'd teach myself shit in the SACs).. A week and a half before the Math exams I pumped out VCAA exams and saw a rapid improvement to consistent A+s relevant to that year level. Probs doesn't relate to your conundrum too much, however.
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^ I completely agree with what you're doing Brenden, most of your friends who are doing hundreds of Further Maths exercises are wasting their time doing repetitive things they know they can do. So why do it? It's much better to just do enough so you understand and know the concepts, then practice with VCAA questions, defs the way to go :)
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My school uses heinemann for methods (not sure about spesh) but seriously I started off the year thinking I'ld do all the questions in the text book and never got around to it :P The essential text book seems to explain things better (or maybe it's just me). My teacher gave us good notes and made us do exam questions in class and for all the SACs, I did checkpoint questions (which are exam questions).
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I had the same kind of problem with figuring out what to use, and in the end I fell back on Essentials for all my textbook-based revision, and used my own notes, my tutor's notes and tests for revision, but as far as the exam period study went I actually did nothing but practice exams, and they increased my understanding far faster than looking at notes would have done.
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So what about.
Understand concepts and methods for the given topic from teachers explanation.
Read the Essentials Book for further clarification.
Do minimum Heinemann questions to satisfy teachers homework requirements.
Do check point questions for given topic.
My problem now is, won't I run out of questions? Or is that impossible in that there are heaps?
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I did every question from my spesh textbook, but next to nothing from methods. But here's my take on the textbooks:
Heinemann - not great in any way
Essentials - best questions, but explanations can be confusing at times and they random step up the hardness of the questions
MathsQuest - questions are ok, explanations are great
Dimensions - great questions and explanations, CAS tips are very very out-dated
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Ugh, don't you wish you could mash them all into 1 book!
Explanations don't really worry me at this stage. I have an excellent teacher and will also be getting a tutor as well!!
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Maths is a subject where you have to do things, looking over notes will do next to nothing and you won't improve.
Dimensions - great questions and explanations, CAS tips are very very out-dated
Isn't Dimensions written by an MHS teacher?
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Ohhhhhhhhhh I know who you are (ra)kesh!!
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Ohhhhhhhhhh I know who you are (ra)kesh!!
Aha!! What are your thoughts on my conundrum?? :D
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Heinemann Methods and Spesh were the textbooks on my booklists. I did have a copy of the essentials books too.
I really did try to avoid doing textbook questions, most of them are pretty boring and they get dull quickly.
For methods, I just did what my teacher wanted out the book - i.e. the minimum questions (he was fairly reasonable too, didn't give that much stuff to do). Most of the questions aren't that hard so it didn't take that long. Sometimes the explanations and content are lacking in Heinemann too. I did some questions every now and then out of Essentials, the some of the review questions were pretty decent.
For spesh, I didn't really use the Heinemann book at all, I only did the questions out of that were required of me (not many). I did spesh through distance ed, they write their own book of notes with their own weekly questions to do (which for the most part tended to be exam type questions or actually pulled from some old past VCAA exam) and only rarely mandated questions from the textbook for that. So yeah, didn't do much from Heinemann, but I did some of the exercises from Essentials early in the year, but kind of stopped after that. Essentials did have some good exercises, the vector proofs exercise being one that stood out for me.
If I didn't actually do the questions, I did read over the explanations in the Essentials book and to get an idea of what content I was supposed to be familiar with.
Most of the time I just googled the topics and got the pen/paper out to scribble stuff and test things out and also attempted questions which caught my interest. Off the top of my head paul's (not paulsterio :P) maths notes (http://tutorial.math.lamar.edu/), wikipedia and MIT opencourseware were websites that popped up in the search results quite regularly. I read a lot of posts and did quite a few of the questions people posted on AN too. It was mostly that which replaced the textbooks questions for me, attempting the ones I found off the net.
and then yeah, exam questions. I didn't really bother with checkpoints since you can just get half the questions off the VCAA site :P but there were some other study guides that I found in my school library (neap and excel in a month or something like that) and did questions out of them sometimes.
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I think what you said to me was good, get the heinemann book for school and homework, but essentials for actually learning and doing tough questions :)
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Dimensions - great questions and explanations, CAS tips are very very out-dated
Isn't Dimensions written by an MHS teacher?
I think the spesh one is written by Dr G, which is why I used it a little haha :P
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I did exactly what paul did and it helped me a lot. Only time i spent a longer time studying is when i began doing trial exams.
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So after reading all comments , doing every question in the textbook is not effective at all? My school uses MQ so I'm not sure if I should get another Essentials which will cost another 72 bucks.
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I did every questions from Spesh MQ, I think it helped.
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What about MQ methods? Do u encourage doing all questions from essentials because I heard some questions are relatively tough and ambiguous. Also just wondering if u do all tje questions in loose leaf papers or exercise books
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Not sure I'm the best for advice there as I didn't do many questions from any book for Methods. I guess if you can knock off MQ questions and then move to trial exams (with at least a month or two) before the exam then you'll be set for preparation :)
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The exams I pretty much have sorted because we have an abundance of practice exams to do, but it's just those SACs that worry me... I'm guessing that teacher tailors their SAC's according to what they teach and also maybe similar questions to the book they use. That's another thing I just thought about. But if I truly know the content well, it shouldn't affect me at all.
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I'll be honest my book is still brand new for methods i never touched it. Our teacher gave us a lot of worksheets and i relied on them before starting trials.
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The exams I pretty much have sorted because we have an abundance of practice exams to do, but it's just those SACs that worry me... I'm guessing that teacher tailors their SAC's according to what they teach and also maybe similar questions to the book they use. That's another thing I just thought about. But if I truly know the content well, it shouldn't affect me at all.
Lol, they won't tailor SACs to be similar to whatever book they use, it's very unlikely.
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The exams I pretty much have sorted because we have an abundance of practice exams to do, but it's just those SACs that worry me... I'm guessing that teacher tailors their SAC's according to what they teach and also maybe similar questions to the book they use. That's another thing I just thought about. But if I truly know the content well, it shouldn't affect me at all.
Lol, they won't tailor SACs to be similar to whatever book they use, it's very unlikely.
Alright thanks! That's good to know, I pretty much knew they wouldn't but thought I'd clear it up regardless.
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Dimensions - great questions and explanations, CAS tips are very very out-dated
Isn't Dimensions written by an MHS teacher?
I think the spesh one is written by Dr G, which is why I used it a little haha :P
Dr was involved in the Methods one too, he wrote the entire calculus section.
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What about MQ methods? Do u encourage doing all questions from essentials because I heard some questions are relatively tough and ambiguous. Also just wondering if u do all tje questions in loose leaf papers or exercise books
I certainly don't recommend doing all the questions from either MQ or essentials. Look at a question, if you can map out in your head exactly hat you SHOULD do to get the answer, then don't bother with the question. If you have even the most minor difficulty with planning out the question in your head, then do the question. That's how I approached it and it worked very well for me.
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I certainly don't recommend doing all the questions from either MQ or essentials. Look at a question, if you can map out in your head exactly hat you SHOULD do to get the answer, then don't bother with the question. If you have even the most minor difficulty with planning out the question in your head, then do the question. That's how I approached it and it worked very well for me.
What practice materials do you recommend outside of the textbook and trials?
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I certainly don't recommend doing all the questions from either MQ or essentials. Look at a question, if you can map out in your head exactly hat you SHOULD do to get the answer, then don't bother with the question. If you have even the most minor difficulty with planning out the question in your head, then do the question. That's how I approached it and it worked very well for me.
What practice materials do you recommend outside of the textbook and trials?
Checkpoints?
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I certainly don't recommend doing all the questions from either MQ or essentials. Look at a question, if you can map out in your head exactly hat you SHOULD do to get the answer, then don't bother with the question. If you have even the most minor difficulty with planning out the question in your head, then do the question. That's how I approached it and it worked very well for me.
What practice materials do you recommend outside of the textbook and trials?
more trials? that worked best for me, some prefer revision lectures, writing notes (i HATE writing notes!!!), etc. they didnt work for me, but thats not to say that it wont work for you.
I reallllyyyy dislike the idea of checkpoints - because when you come to do the vcaa exams, and take them as if theyre your REAL exam, you can already remember some questions so its like cheating yourself. i avoided checkpoints even against direct instruction from my teachers
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I certainly don't recommend doing all the questions from either MQ or essentials. Look at a question, if you can map out in your head exactly hat you SHOULD do to get the answer, then don't bother with the question. If you have even the most minor difficulty with planning out the question in your head, then do the question. That's how I approached it and it worked very well for me.
What practice materials do you recommend outside of the textbook and trials?
more trials? that worked best for me, some prefer revision lectures, writing notes (i HATE writing notes!!!), etc. they didnt work for me, but thats not to say that it wont work for you.
I reallllyyyy dislike the idea of checkpoints - because when you come to do the vcaa exams, and take them as if theyre your REAL exam, you can already remember some questions so its like cheating yourself. i avoided checkpoints even against direct instruction from my teachers
Depends when you do them though. I did a few relevant Checkpoints questions for each of Methods and Chem before SACs. Come exam time I couldn't remember having seen any of them before for Methods. Chem, a few but largely not.
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I certainly don't recommend doing all the questions from either MQ or essentials. Look at a question, if you can map out in your head exactly hat you SHOULD do to get the answer, then don't bother with the question. If you have even the most minor difficulty with planning out the question in your head, then do the question. That's how I approached it and it worked very well for me.
What practice materials do you recommend outside of the textbook and trials?
more trials? that worked best for me, some prefer revision lectures, writing notes (i HATE writing notes!!!), etc. they didnt work for me, but thats not to say that it wont work for you.
I reallllyyyy dislike the idea of checkpoints - because when you come to do the vcaa exams, and take them as if theyre your REAL exam, you can already remember some questions so its like cheating yourself. i avoided checkpoints even against direct instruction from my teachers
Depends when you do them though. I did a few relevant Checkpoints questions for each of Methods and Chem before SACs. Come exam time I couldn't remember having seen any of them before for Methods. Chem, a few but largely not.
i still remember questions from years ago... even if i dont remember the answers, i remember the general gist and i feel like im cheating myself into thinking im smarter than i really am
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that's exactly what happened to me when doing one of the VCAA papers after attmepting most of the checkpoints questions.I ended up circling most of the answers without even reading the questions because I still had the answers in my mind. So I got 25/25 but that wasn't the actual me doing it since I know I am a careless person, so in reality i might get 3-4 wrong. Any advice to avoid this situation while still able to do questions from every topic?
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that's exactly what happened to me when doing one of the VCAA papers after attmepting most of the checkpoints questions.I ended up circling most of the answers without even reading the questions because I still had the answers in my mind. So I got 25/25 but that wasn't the actual me doing it since I know I am a careless person, so in reality i might get 3-4 wrong. Any advice to avoid this situation while still able to do questions from every topic?
that's what trials papers are for! You get lots and lots of practice at TONNES of questions. That's why I just kept doing as many trial papers as I could
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What about during the year, when you haven't gotten to the level of doing trials or haven finished the course?
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A+ Notes and NEAP StudySmart or SmartStudy or whatever it is. And the ATARNotes Methods book should be out by then.
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A+ notes are the best for biology if you plan on doing it.
For maths the Derrick Ha books are freaking awesome!
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i just used the textbook throughout the year and made sure my theory was spot on