As you look to the end of your high school experience, now is the time to begin to organize your notes, roll up your sleeves and start the process of review.

With a few weeks of preparation and escalating levels of application, burn out will be avoided and  lower anxiety levels will facilitate meaningful prep.

To begin;  I suggest that you review the syllabus in its entirety and highlight the topics you really never got. Perhaps highlight RED. Those you ‘kinda have’ highlight in yellow and those you have pegged highlight Green(?) Chances are the green will have a lot of objective 1 statements such as ‘state’ or ‘define’ etc and those in red will contain a lot of objective 3 statements such as ‘compare’.

Make a point to see your teacher asap for those in red.

Perhaps watch Hank and his series of Biology Crash course videos if issues remain (or something similar)

[youtube]QnQe0xW_JY4[/youtube]

From there I recommend you organize and collate all your notes, get them in order etc.

If you have not already made a revision  timetable then do so ASAP. This must be DO-A-BLE. That is the most important feature, and it must include variety (mixing up subjects / topics within subjects) it must also provide you with time off. Thirty minutes a night on a single subject might be the most you can do, but thats better than nothing and it will reap benefits at a  later time.

This is an example of a review timetable. Its simple, and provides a day off. At the weekend, I suggest you do not over estimate what you can get through, you will have homework.  I also feel its important to try and get to bed at  reasonable time the night before, ‘sleep till you wake’, and try to get a prompt start. If you were to start at 9am on a Saturday, your revision would be complete by mid-day.

Its a commitment yes, but not for long and the preparation will reap benefits.

Week Mon Tue Wed Thur Fri Sat Sun
 1 BioFrench Geog Chem Engmath Biofrench OFF BioFrench

Geog

ChemEng

Math

2 BioFrench Geog Chem Engmath Biofrench OFF BioFrench

Geog

ChemEng

Math

3 BioFrench Geog Chem Engmath Biofrench OFF BioFrench

Geog

ChemEng

Math

Perhaps create word boards using WORDLE from the syllabus note you have, and stick them around your bedroom, bathroom etc.

Progress to mindmapping and a more active form of review using a tool such as Novamind or a pen and paper. (Just reading your notes, is most ineffective).

From the material and the textbooks at your disposal, you MUST start working through past papers and the variety of questions that you will come across in the exam proper (MC/DBQ/ Structured short answer/ Extended free response) .

Ask your teacher for past papers to practice with. Your teacher will, most likely, have a plan of how best to implement the papers at their disposal but should have some that you can start with. Very much like training and fine tuning an athlete, your brain requires a steady build up of preparation. For me, the Multiple choice questions come first to establish broad knowledge. DBQ can come soon after to ensure you understand the command terms and are very much a skill unto themselves, visit i-biology.net (see below for direct link).

Work through Extended free response questions as part of the  next tier of review, and finish in the last two weeks with the most current and accessible exam papers. (IN ALL CASES you MUST read and process the mark scheme.)

Collating your notes, establishing an holistic approach of all content for review, ACTivelY reviewing and past papers regardless of the route, is a must for effective preparation (whether you agree with my suggestions or not). That and a good night sleep the night before. Then when you head to the exam hall you can say something along the lines of… “Bring it on !!! I have done all I could, and this is the best I can be”.

Its also not a bad idea to collate YouTube videos on topics of interest. I often find it a struggle to locate videos I need that are of sufficient quality so the following are some I have subscriptions for. Each video is one of many from the channel I use as source of videos. Something to get you started

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[youtube id=”akO5xyUEbPI”]

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[youtube id=”F6vQKrRjQcQ”]

[youtube id=”DVRSicQMpnI”]

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