Down in the dumps

[ahnafamer]

Hey guys! I know it’s a very busy time for us in the year but I was wondering if I could get some help. I’ve just received my third SAC out of five, getting 78% bringing down my overall average to the high 70s. I know I’ve got two left, but this result has left me devastated. I know for a thing that my school’s SACs get scaled up (albeit not much) and I’ve been working very hard for the last two SACs and Exam. At the start of the year I was aiming for a 40 but it’s slumped down to a 38. So I was wondering if my goal (either one of them) is still attainalble. Any suggestions for improving and advice would be greatly appreciated too! Thanks guys!

[Atlantis]

First of all, of course your goal is still attainable!!! The exam is the most important part.

View your SACS as ways to see where you need improvement on for the exam. Write down all the things you lost marks for in any of your sacs and practice them then get them marked, do this as many times over as you feel like you need.

If you say you have been working hard for your last two sacs and the exam then that's great!! I really don't see why you wouldn't achieve a high study score.

My best advice is to always keep your goal in mind and remember to self test. Ask yourself content related questions and see if you can answer them. If you can't, there's another clue as to gaps in your knowledge so you can fill them in coming exam revision time.

 

[PhoenixxFire]

Your actual SAC marks don't really matter, what matters is your rank. Given you know your SAC marks get scaled up that likely means that your teachers are marking harshly compared to other schools. Do you know what the top results are for the SAC's? Or your rank? I have to say I wish i had 2 left. I did my last 'real' SAC yesterday and all I have left is my poster. (Which my teacher has told us he's not going to use for differentiation.) If you feel comfortable and it is something your teacher will tell you you can ask what rank you are and this will give you an indication of where you are at. If two people at different schools are averaging 20% and 90% but both are rank 1 and both get 100% in the exam they will (theoretically its more complicated than this) get the same Study Score.

Have you gone through your SAC's and written full mark answers for the questions you got wrong? Happy to help you do this if you haven't.
I'm assuming that you have the evolution and poster SAC's to go? If you have checkpoints I would advise doing as many questions from he relevant chapters as possible. Checkpoints questions are written as VCAA writes them so even if your teachers questions are very different it will still help you in your exam which is far more important.

Also worth noting that Unit 4 SAC's are worth more than Unit 3 SAC's so with 2 still to go you can definitely still do well. If you haven't done your poster SAC yet you're welcome to make up as many Independent variables/dependant variables/aims/hypothesis/etc. as you want and i'll do my best to give you feedback on them.

Also if you have any specific questions or anything you want explained you can post it in the biology question thread and someone will explain it.

Feel free to ask here or PM me if there's anything you don't understand and want me to explain. Happy to help you study for your SAC's in any way I can (it's great revision for me).

[ahnafamer]

Hey PhoenixxFire!Firstly, thank you for the long and extremely helpful reply. In terms of my ranking, our school has very large large cohort for Bio this year (90-100 students) and I'm sure I make the top 25 the highest score for the last SAC was a friend of mine who got 29/30. I am on very good terms with both biology teachers at my school and frequently discuss where I went wrong within my SACs (usually due to me panicking or trying to rush through questions). Yes I've been doing quite a lot of study on which is quite similar to checkpoints have have found it to be quite useful. Yeah, I'd love it revise for SACs as well haha. Thank you so much!

[PhoenixxFire]

Given you say you rush through your SAC's it may be helpful to you to go through questions and write down what you think the question should include. I rushed my 2nd bio SAC and messed it up and that helped me. It gives you good habits for when you go into SAC's and exams. Like when you doing checkpoints questions underline the word (define, explain, compare etc.) and then make sure you see how many marks it is and if you were marking it do you think you would have enough information to get full marks. It takes too long to do in tests but it will get you in a good habit. Also if you haven't done any previous VCAA exams yet it can be good to do entire practice exams under test conditions as that will give you a good idea of the time you need to take and will also stop you from panicking as much when you do the real thing. Good Luck