If you haven’t started revising yet, you should start right now!
Warning: This is a VERY long post, however, it contains a lot of useful information that could help with your exams, skim and scan to find what you want, but I would recommend you read it all! Don’t forget to tell your friends about this post if you find it useful!
Exams are fast approaching for those of you taking your IB May 2010 Exams! And that means you need to start some serious revision and accumulation of all that knowledge you have been given over the past 18 months. The IB Exams are serious business, especially seeing that you need to pass all six of your subjects to get the full Diploma!
You CAS and Coursework requirements will be out of the way, your ToK lessons will now be over (three cheers!) and your Extended Essay will probably be half way around the world by now being marked! Now this is the time to put everything aside and crack on with some Revision!
Revision Tips:
Study Guides
Study Guides are great to help refresh your memory of stuff you’ve gone over in more detail in Class, you can also use them for learning things that you may have missed if you have run out of time completely. Study Guides take all the information you need and compresses it into nice, easy to handle segments that you can revise from, something that is helpful if you’ve got a short attention span!
There are Study Guides for many subjects, but not for all, so use them where you can, but don’t rely on them completely! Use your own notes you’ve made in class, hassle your teachers to help you (email, phone, fax, Facebook, whatever!) and even checkout Youtube, especially for Mathematics where you can find some really amazing e-learning videos to help get your head around everything from Differentiation to Trig to Logarithms. Feel free to leave comments of any useful channels or videos you find that could benefit other students!
Here are the Study Guides available from the Oxford University Press:
IB Business and Management Study Guide
IB Mathematical Studies Study Guide
IB PAST PAPERS!
These are vital for successful revision! You need to get used to the way the IBO ask you questions! The best way to do this? Past Papers, Past Papers and more Past Papers!
http://www.freeexampapers.com/Dndex.php?d=SUI=
The above lists hundreds of IB Past Papers and their markschemes for anybody to access, it really is an amazingly useful resource and you should seriously consider using it, it will help. The site is really easy to use and everything should be self-explanatory.
Also check out this website that lists some more IB resources that are quite useful. Including QuestionBanks which are also available to purchase from the IBO store should you wish to use them. Downloading them from the following site is illegal, and I am not responsible for your actions, I am simply alerting you to a website that offers useful (and legal) IB resources, however there are also illegal files there which you should not access unless you have the right to.
and
http://y2sdigitalmedia.com/v2/qb.html
I am not responsible, in any way, for any decisions you make in using these papers or Questionbanks as they are copyright protected to the IBO, you access the above websites at your own risk and agree not to use anything that is copyrighted unless you have permission from the IBO to use them, this means that to use the files in a legal way you need to purchase them from http://store.ibo.org
NB: Print off or complete the past paper exam BEFORE you look at the markscheme, it will be very tempting to take a peak at the markscheme whilst completing the paper to check a little detail, and you’ll then find your eyes looking at the other answers. This won’t help track your progress. It will help you know what they’re asking you, but it would be much better to look AFTER completing the entire paper, that way you can work out what you need to focus on, what you’re good at, and also what the IB want you to say. I’m very guilty of using the markscheme to cheat, so now I don’t print it off at all and leave it closed whilst I complete the past paper (away from any distractions such as the computer or the TV). If you feel tempted to look something up in your notes or on the internet, mark it down by circling the question number, then at the end you can go over it. Some people may find it better to look it up there and then, but that’s down to you, just try not to rely on the markscheme to complete the paper for you as you won’t have it in the real thing, and relying on it may damage your confidence.
How to Revise:
Many people revise in different ways, and trying to work out which way works best for you is probably the hardest part of revising, it is for me anyway! There are a number of ways in which you can revise, and you should give them a try and see what works and what doesn’t. These are:
- Prompt Notes – Like what people use when giving speeches
- Buzzwords – Where you use single words of phrases to trigger a memory
- Copying – Rewriting your notes may help you remember your content, it may be a waste of time and paper for others
- Audio – Record yourself saying the most important stuff, play it back.
- Video – Youtube videos to help you visualise processes (for Sciences) learn techniques for Mathematics, economics and business related commentators etc. Youtube has almost everything, it’s the best thing since sliced bread the IBO.
- Colourful Posters – Great for people that like learning with colour! (Don’t spend more time making it look pretty than actually revising! It’s very easily done)
- Tables & Grids – Summarising things into Tables and neatly into grids can be really useful for ‘Causes and Effects’ for History, Differences and Similarities for History and the Sciences, and a whole number of things. Very good for comparison type questions that may come up in the Sciences and Group 3 (Individuals & Societies)
- Teach your friends – Teaching somebody else helps to set stuff into your memory, take it in turns with class mates to teach eachother a topic and help reinforce what you know, it will build your confidence, which is important if you sometimes hesitate when answering a question because ‘I may be wrong’, if you have no other answers, go for it!
- Mnemonics – These are fantastic for remembering the ordering of things (Scientific processes! Think MITOSIS! (PMAT)), the most known one is ROY.G.BIV – Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet – Or, ‘Richard of York gave battle in vain’. Any type of these will help you remember the right ordering which is sometimes a way the IB like to trick you!
- Take a Break! – This one gets onto every list about Revision Tips, but it’s one of the most important. Don’t work your brain into overdrive, it will most likely make you feel worse in the long run, especially if you’re not used to intense revision. Take a break every hour, whatever you think is best. Be strict with yourself! Don’t go for your break and return 5 hours and 3 beers later, Procrastination is evil, I know all about it!
Revision Timetable
Having a timetable and sticking to it is tough, it’s a lot easier to stick to a timetable set by authority, e.g. Your School, but following a timetable you set yourself is hard and it requires discipline and effort and determination. Planning what you need to revise and when to do it will help you get through your revision, it’ll help you manage your time and prioritise what needs the most work. It’s good to have a timetable, but you must stick to it. I can’t emphasise this enough! Having a timetable and then putting everything off to go to the Cinema or to watch that latest episode of House will build up over the days to a point where you’ve lost hours upon hours of revision time!
Okay, so how do I go about making a Revision Timetable with the minimum amount of effort required? One site: GetRevising.co.uk This site will help you plan out your time, you can prioritise what subjects needs the most work and then it will make you a pretty and colourful timetable that you can print out. It’s not a one click process, it requires effort and the site may annoy you at times, but it’s worth it! And it is almost certainly going to be a lot easier than you opening up an Excel spreadsheet and making one yourself.
Now, I would like to wish ALL of you the BEST OF LUCK in your examinations!!! I hope you all do well and get the grades you need for your University Offers (if you’re going). It has been a long ride for you all, and I’ve got it all to look forward to next year!
If you have any comments on revising, tips, or wish to say Good Luck to others, please feel free to leave a comment, you can log in with Facebook or just use the form below this post.
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