Accelerated maths kids! and advice from actual Year 12's on how to handle :D (1 Viewer)

[talisman]

I'm currently in Year 11 and accelerating in 2U and 3U maths. What advice do you guys have, like how many hours should I spend on maths per day, when to start doing past papers?

yours sincerely,
worried and nervous yr 11 student

 

[jet]

Don't touch HSC past papers until after your trials.

I wouldn't go near any sort of past paper for trials until you've learnt all of the content. This will be either Term 2 or early Term 3 depending.

The only past papers you should be doing now are past papers for school assessments which are coming up. The style of the exam will differ significantly between exams so there's no point using HSC past papers for school assessments.

I would personally be completing the assigned homework whenever I get it and a little time going over concepts and understanding them. This could take a couple of hours depending on how hard the concept is.

 

[talisman]

do you think approximately 3 - 4 hours of maths per day is what i should be aiming for? i guess the advantage i have is that during the holidays, i'll only be studying one subject, and that's maths. but i don't get as many frees during the week as year 12's

 

[deswa1]

Best advice anyone ever gave me was "Don't make mistakes". By following this advice alone, I topped ext. maths in prelim at a selective school. On a more serious note, in terms of every night, do however much is needed for you to FULLY understand the concept. For example, when we were doing polynomials in class, which I found really simple, I might just do the last extension questions in Cambridge and be done in about 10 minutes. For other areas that I found more difficult, e.g. circle geo (my enemy), I would do the textbook questions and then heaps of past paper questions as well just to make sure I could get it.

Also, I would disagree big time with what jetblack said. Start doing past papers from now. You can easily download over 400 trials from the net, find questions from topics you have done and start now, there's no substitute for actual exam questions.

 

[delian]

Make sure you understand your topics before attempting past papers.
That said, past papers can be a good way to gauge whether you know a particular topic well enough.

 

[Timske]

Best advice anyone ever gave me was "Don't make mistakes". By following this advice alone, I topped ext. maths in prelim at a selective school. On a more serious note, in terms of every night, do however much is needed for you to FULLY understand the concept. For example, when we were doing polynomials in class, which I found really simple, I might just do the last extension questions in Cambridge and be done in about 10 minutes. For other areas that I found more difficult, e.g. circle geo (my enemy), I would do the textbook questions and then heaps of past paper questions as well just to make sure I could get it.

Also, I would disagree big time with what jetblack said. Start doing past papers from now. You can easily download over 400 trials from the net, find questions from topics you have done and start now, there's no substitute for actual exam questions.

+1

 

[jet]

Tbh, 3-4 hours a day is complete overkill. Here's what the average routine would be:

Wake up at 7-ish
School at 8 ish
Finish at 3:30 ish
So that's 7 hours of school. And it's only 3:30.
Then say an hour relaxation, takes you to 4:30.
Do some homework, couple of hours a night. Takes you to 6:30.
Dinner time, TV or whatever. That's about 7:30 or 8.

3-4 hours of maths every night is unrealistic in the general scheme of things on top of this very general schedule. It's also a very good way to burn out extremely quickly. Say you get 45 mins of homework each time you have a maths class, I'd be spending at most an hour and a half on the work/understanding a concept. Studying on the weekend is much better because you don't have the 7 hours of school to suck the life out of you.

EDIT: I should point out that I was accelerated in 4 unit. One of the biggest things I learned (unfortunately this was primarily after I accelerated) was smart study is better than large amounts of study. Know your limits and ALWAYS abide by them. Give yourself plenty of relaxation time. You need a solid foundation in your personal life before you can really succeed academically.

Don't forget to commit yourself to your other subjects as well. Also, you should also be taking part in extra-curriculars and other school events. Enjoy your time, don't just spend it studying!

 

[talisman]

hahah DON'T MAKE MISTAKES. i got that down, but when it comes to exams, it's like my instinct for sniffing out mistakes disappears. obviously something i really need to improve on. i have found random trial papers and term papers from heaps of schools so i'll probs do topic questions from there and stuff.

so i should start doing past hsc papers? i'll probs leave 1995 and onwards for after trials. between trials and the hsc, there's about one term, so 12 weeks so that gives me about 1 past paper per week and a bit and the last week won't really be doing papers, it'll be going over past mistakes you reckon?

Best advice anyone ever gave me was "Don't make mistakes". By following this advice alone, I topped ext. maths in prelim at a selective school. On a more serious note, in terms of every night, do however much is needed for you to FULLY understand the concept. For example, when we were doing polynomials in class, which I found really simple, I might just do the last extension questions in Cambridge and be done in about 10 minutes. For other areas that I found more difficult, e.g. circle geo (my enemy), I would do the textbook questions and then heaps of past paper questions as well just to make sure I could get it.

Also, I would disagree big time with what jetblack said. Start doing past papers from now. You can easily download over 400 trials from the net, find questions from topics you have done and start now, there's no substitute for actual exam questions.

 

[jet]

hahah DON'T MAKE MISTAKES. i got that down, but when it comes to exams, it's like my instinct for sniffing out mistakes disappears. obviously something i really need to improve on. i have found random trial papers and term papers from heaps of schools so i'll probs do topic questions from there and stuff.

so i should start doing past hsc papers? i'll probs leave 1995 and onwards for after trials. between trials and the hsc, there's about one term, so 12 weeks so that gives me about 1 past paper per week and a bit and the last week won't really be doing papers, it'll be going over past mistakes you reckon?

It's the "Does my answer make sense" factor.

E.g. If you know the area under y = x² from x = 0 to x = 1 is 1/3, then if you're integrating from x = 0 to x = 0.3 the answer should not be 53.

E.g. If you know sin(x) <= 1 and you calculate 5sin(x) and get 25, there's something wrong.

It's very useful to develop an intuition between what's going on geometrically and what's going on numerically/analytically. You've probably noticed that the large majority of questions have some sort of geometrical (or in a more advanced sense, topological) meaning. Exploit that.

 

[talisman]

thanks for the tips guys. i have a lot of co-corricular. i virtually have a 14 hour day on my friday

 

[Carrotsticks]

thanks for the tips guys. i have a lot of co-corricular. i virtually have a 14 hour day on my friday

All of my Fridays tend to be 24 hours long, like any other day.

 

[Nooblet94]

All of my Fridays tend to be 24 hours long, like any other day.

Oh god. Repped.

 

[talisman]

shit dude. introduce me to hectic uni life. run me through your day

 

[someth1ng]

I was accelerated as well and got 46 for MX1 and 94 for Mathemathics. The amount of study I did throughout the year was minimal but I payed a lot of attention in class and did a lot of work during class.

 

[Internet_Police]

Accelerating maths is easy as shit. It is the only HSC subject you are doing this semester. What could be easier?

 

[mirakon]

do you think approximately 3 - 4 hours of maths per day is what i should be aiming for? i guess the advantage i have is that during the holidays, i'll only be studying one subject, and that's maths. but i don't get as many frees during the week as year 12's

As someone who accelerated 4u, I can assure you that 3-4 hours study is more than enough total study for all your subjects, let alone just maths.

But what deswa said is also entirely correct, you shouldn't be studying in terms of hours, but rather with respect to how long it takes you to fully understand a concept, whether its 10mins or a few hours.