No matter what time of the year it is – exams are never far enough away!
It’s amazing how quickly they’ll creep up.
Here’s a painless task for you to help them with that will significantly help them with their exam preparation – no matter what time of year.
The first thing your child must know before they actually start swatting is what they need to study and in what order.
To achieve this we suggest they (perhaps with your help) make a subject map for every subject they’re going to have an exam on at the end of the year.
A subject map is simply an organised list with every topic they need to cover by exam day. They prevent your child ever forgetting to study for an important topic, and prevent them getting off track studying things they don’t really need to know.
Simply put – they make sure your child studies for everything that they’re likely to be examined on in time for the exam.
Subject maps should have the following simple structure:
Subject Heading (E.g. Science)
- 1st Main topic (E.g. Biology)
- First sub-topic (E.g. Genetics)
- Main points/key words from this topic
- Second sub-topic (E.g. Micro-organisms)
- Main points/key words from this topic
- Third sub-topic…
- 2nd Main Topic (E.g. Chemistry), and so on…
Here’s our example of a subject map
Click to see it full size
Because subject maps tell your child what to study and in what order, they act as a guide to prevent getting lost while studying. As we say to our students, you wouldn’t go on a road trip without a map, and studying is no different.
We recommend that your child creates their subjects maps at the front of a new exercise book as opposed to a lose piece of paper, as these are easily lost!
Leave a Reply