do you recommend us reading the whole study design for our specific 3/4 subject or just the first AOS so were ready for the first assessment our school gives. It will be hard retaining knowledge from the whole study design.
I never read the whole study design (SD) last year. I just took it one AOS at a time. I don't think there's much point in worrying about that stuff which aren't relevant to you at the time. That being said some may benefit from browsing through the SD to get a general idea of what they will be doing over the year. It's really a personal preference of whether you prefer to take it step by step or you wish to have an idea of what's going to be happening the whole year.
Also what do people mean when they say they look at the study design and make dot points?
The study design has "key knowledge" for each AOS which sets out all the information/topics you are assessed on in that AOS, what they mean is that you should use these key knowledge dot points as the headings and sub-headings of your notes to ensure 1) you learn everything and 2) you don't waste time writing notes on irrelevant stuff (some textbooks tend to go into extraneous details which you need to weed out when studying).