1. You must summarise:Summarising is really important. I purchased A3 notebooks for Biology and Chemistry. In those, I summarised my whole course. I now use those summaries as tutoring handbooks to give people accurate definitions and make sure I cover all parts of the course. I can't summarise on the computer. Despite my love of typing for everything ever over writing, to summarize, I need to use my right hand and a pen. This might not be the case for you! I'm not telling you you should summarize in a handwritten format necessarily, but you should definitely summarise. Summarising does not involve simply collecting handouts, and definition sheets and then compiling them into a bound reference. It does not involve using copy/paste. It involves rewriting, dot pointing, and actively restructuring information of your own accord. If you manipulate the information in front of you, you are far more likely to learn it and remember it.
Secondly, it's important that you summaries are not messy. I am the messiest person alive, I seriously am. If you could see my room at the moment you would think it was the site of a bombing. However, when it comes to study, my notes have to be neat. The same goes for your summaries. Organise it by topic if you would like to. Put definitions and a glossary in at the beginning or end and then worry about the other stuff. Create flow charts if you like to work visually. Just make sure it's organised in a style that you like. It can be organised in any manner, as long as it is organised.
I think it's best not to summarise in your Biology notebook.
My summary book became something of a dictionary, separate to general classwork and note taking. It was away from the clutter and battery of school life and the school bag. When I was doing some study questions, or got something wrong in a prac exam, I would just look it up in the summary book without trouble.
This is what an ideal life should be like. Don't submit your summaries to the general coursework - keep them separate and out of the way. You might think that's trivial but please, trust me, on the day of the exam when you're freaking out, you haven't had breakfast and your mind is racing a mile a minute, you will thank me that you could just pick up that book and
- you knew where it all was
- you didn't get confused by masses of information
- things weren't repeated 500 times in your normal textbook in different places
When to start this step: NOW. RIGHT NOW. Sorry guys I had like seven assignments due at once for Uni it was a bit of a downer in terms of my time so I wanted to write and post this earlier but I couldn't. GET ON THIS IMMEDIATELY. "Oh but we haven't finished the course". Yes I'm aware you're still doing immunity or signal transduction. But you just summarise what you do know, and then you go back and summarise those two when you're finished with them.
For semester 1:
- At the beginning of immunity
For semester 2:
- The very first weekend of your September break if you have a three week break
- The weekend before your September break if you have a two week break
(not including practice exam week at school)
2. Your flip folder, your new study mateIt was my Biology teacher that decided that my school should supply its students with a flip folder in which we could place handouts, flowcharts and important sheets we had received during the semester.
Not usually one to like reading things I didn't write - as before stated - and not usually one to be organised in general, I was initially skeptical.
However, I put my A3 summary book in the flip folder, and suddenly, life became easy.
Your flip folder is the home of three things.
1. Your summary.
2. Your sheets that you find important - diagrams of things that you cannot write down - SACs that you have gotten back with corrections so you can go over them if you need to.
3. Most importantly, your completed and corrected practice exams.
That last one is important. You do not want to lose your completed practice exams. Because if there is something you cannot understand, it is easy to ask the teacher. Aaaanyway.
When to start this step:
As soon as possible! Once you have the summaries done, these are little additives, so it goes along in that way.
3. The practice examsOkay so this is the most important point I come to. Make sure you have completed steps 1 and 2 before you get to it, for the love of God.
Different schools do practice exams in different ways. I got my practice exams in a folder, there were about 50 in it. Some people get their practice exams on a cd. Some people pay for their practice exams, some don't. Some schools don't give their students practice exams and it's up to them to source them. Whatever you get and do, there are some important points I have to make before we begin this section.
1. Defining a practice exam - a practice exam is an exam that covers the course content in the style and manner in which the VCAA can be expected to cover that content, asks exam style questions and is generally of the same study design as this year. (However, some 2001-2003 exams are useful as fresh material if you run out of exams, so don't rule them out right away). A practice exam is not just a 'past exam' written by the VCAA. In fact, here I will be treating that as an entirely different entity, and for good reason. A practice exam is an exam either written by the VCAA or by an external company like Insight etc. which can be used as the
best form of study revision you will ever, ever get.2. I don't care how you received your practice exams, you should have them as a fresh material copy in which you can write when you sit down to do one. That is, if you have a cd of practice exams, do not do your practice exam reading off the computer and then writing into a book. Similarly, if you are given template exams and told you can't write in them, don't just write into your book and read off the sheet. It can be tiresome and time consuming, but please, please, please if I stress one thing in this post it will be that you should take the time to print them all off so that you can write on them under exam conditions. Exam conditions are not exam conditions if you're not writing on the actual paper. It is actually an entirely different experience and one that is nowhere near as real as going the exam without the distractions of changing from one medium to another (computer to paper) or one paper to another (paper 1 and paper 2). Okay so, you might be saying, yeah Simpak but that's expensive. Most people should be able to print free at their high school (or at least that's the case for private schooling, not sure about public). If you can't, most people have a printer at home where they can buy a new black ink cartridge, a new packet of A4s and pop them in the printer for the sake of proper exam preparation. Do not just discard this point, please. If there's anything that I think is inefficient, it's going to the trouble to do exams without really doing them the way they were intended. You might also be thinking that it is better to use your time studying instead of photocopying, as I did. I spent about 6 spares (or six hours) photocopying exam papers in the library before my Biology and Chemistry exams. It is worth it. Doing it this way also allows you to organise your exams properly into the flip folder.
3. Exam conditions do not mean, while I am on Facebook, while I have my phone next to me, while I go to get dinner in the middle of it then come back to it later, while I am on VN asking a question and refreshing the page. Clear a space on your desk, turn off the electronics and sit down for 15 minutes reading time, and 1.5 hours writing time just as you would as if it was the day. Acting as if you're under real time and exam constraints is imperative.
4. Write in pen. You will be asked to on the exam, so for the points mentioned above and your own practice, just do it anyway. They get mad when you don't do it on the exam and it's good practice.
Okay so now the general housekeeping is out of the way...
I completed 50 practice exams per semester for Biology alone.
This meant that at the beginning of my practice exam study period, I would do 3 exams a week. And then later on and about 3 weeks from the exam, it was 1-2 a night. Each under exam conditions. Then I would correct, go through what I got wrong and add those things to the end of my summary so the next time I read over it I would be reminded of what I had done wrong the last time.
Make sure you correct and go through your work, of course, we're all told this from day one of high school.
And make sure you're ready to work. I mean really work. That amount of exams may seem like a lot at first but it's really okay once you get into the swing of things.
This exam period you have an advantage - most of you will have one exam, some of you two, some of you three. It's still nothing like the five or six you're going to have at the end of the year. So this is good practice to start working hard when you have the time to dedicate to your cause.
If you can't do that many, I would say at least 20 exams is a minimum if you want to do really well in Biology. You need to know that you can answer all types of questions, figure out what all the key points are etc.
This is why practice exams are such a good form of revision. You are familiarised with almost everything they will throw at you (see the next point for more on this) and you have made sure you know where the marks are. What key words were they awarding the mark for? Pay attention to the exam report (for VCAA) and the answers (for other companies) and make sure you identify where you got the marks. That way, when you come to answering a certain question, you're going to be much better off because you already know exactly what they want you to say.
Now I come to the types of exams. Do not think it's sufficient to just do the VCAA exams and be done with it. That said, they are the best resource you have. In one way...and not...in another.
The best: they are the best because they are written by the people who will be writing your exam. Obviously they use the same format every year. You can see a pattern in what they will usually ask you and what it is unlikely that they will ask if you have done enough exams.
Not so good: in that they have already used the questions in previous papers, so they're not going to use them again. This reinforces the importance of secondary exam company choices - these questions are all possibilities (as long as you choose reputable companies).
The way I tend to tell people to go about this is to do this:
Take the 2009 Biology Exam under exam conditions, see how you went. You won't have gone well. (see the next point). But now, this is the most recent idea about what will be asked of you, and you can clear everything up with a teacher or a tutor.
Take a good number of secondary company exams, or non-VCAA exams, with a VCAA exam every now and then. However, choose older exams, like those from 2003 or 2005. Not the more recent from 2007 and 2008.
Save your 2008 exam for the night before!
Use your 2007 exam in the last leg of revision to make sure you understand the way in which the VCAA words questions, marks, etc.
This way you're not clumping all your VCAA exams into one section and then forgetting about them. Similarly, you have the ability to clear up problems with these valuable examples well before the day.
You also have a good representation of what you will experience that fateful next morning if you do the 2008 exam (or 2007 if you want I don't mind) right before your 2010 exam (that is, your exam).
Of course you don't have to follow that. That is just how it made sense to me...
Do all VCAA exams.
Do as many secondary company exams as you possibly can.
And yeah, being all "I can only do 2 a week no more!" isn't really realistic. I have a social life, by the way. And I kept it in VCE. It's harder to keep in Uni, so have fun with that

Okay so, doing well and not doing well. The reason that I stress that you need to do so many exams, is really because the more you do the better you do. And that might be obvious, but really. Sometimes when you start off under exam conditions with practice exams, you get around 69%. At least I did, at first. After doing as many exams as I said, and the week before the real exam, I was up to 97% averages on all of my Biology practice exams. And of course in the real exam, I didn't get 97% I got a bit below that but it was enough! Or I wouldn't be writing this for you today.
The point is that the people I know who did about ten or so, just seemed not to reach their full potential.
You're never good at a Biology exam the first time. It's the practice in the practice exam that makes you good in the assessment. Don't be discouraged if you're not doing so well at first. If you stick at it, and do much more in quantity, you will succeed.
When to start:
Semester 1: When you start immunity.* Not after you have finished summarizing.
Semester 2: When you have finished summarising, in your September break, and before practice exam week.
When to stop:
Don't stop. Do as much as you can, right up until the night before.
*A word on this. You won't have finished immunity but it's advisable to start when you start immunity. Just leave those questions out if you can't answer them because you haven't covered the content, and come back to them when you have.
CONTINUED IN THE NEXT POST! O: