You may be wondering: How can I best prepare for Year 12 Methods during the holidays?

Perhaps you struggled a bit in Year 11 or are looking to get ahead in the year’s content. There’s a lot of things you can do doing your break (don’t worry, they’re chill tasks!) to help set you up for the year.

This article will take you through some of these general things that you can do.

Go over your weaker topics

Did you find anything particularly challenging last year in maths? If you did, you should spend some time learning the topic again. A lot of the topics in Year 12 Methods build up from the ones covered in Year 11 (and some of them even repeat) so it is very important that you develop your understanding of them.

A good way to revise these weaker topics is by watching YouTube videos and doing practise questions from the textbook. If you want to take it a step further, try and re-do some of your class tests from Year 11 to see how much you’ve improved.

A list of topics you might want to consider reviewing are:

Sketching graphs (hyperbolas, truncus’, cubic, quadratics, etc)
Trigonometric functions and the unit circle
Calculus (differentiation and integration)

Play around with your calculator

One key tip to succeed in methods is to become extremely efficient with your calculator. Since you have completed Year 11 Methods, you would have gotten exposed to some CAS functions that you will use religiously in Year 12 (e.g., calculus functions).

Now that you have the time, you should play around with these functions. You should also work out quick ways of doing things. Perhaps you can even create some of your own shortcuts!

You can download a set of notes detailing some important CAS functions here.

Start preparing your reference book

There is no feeling worse than coming to the end of Unit 4 and realising that your bound reference book only has content up to Week 2 in it. Thus, before you start Year 12 Methods, you should begin your reference book by adding in some content that you know you will need.

You can also think about how you are going to structure the book – are you going to have examples and content? Will all the examples be in one place? Are you going to break the book up into topics.

If you start it during the break and know how you are going to approach it, you will be more likely to add to it throughout the year.

Look ahead to the topics you will be covering in the year

It is worth looking through the topics that you will be covering in Year 12. Maybe you will find a topic that you are particularly excited for! This will also help you understand whether it is worth revising any topics from last year.

The best way to get an overview of the tear’s topics is by looking at the Methods Study Design. This outlines everything that you need to know, and the rough order you will be learning things in.

If you are keen, you can also start getting a head start on some of the earlier topics. You can add content to your reference book and start doing practise questions from the textbook. If you get a bit ahead, you are more likely to understand the content when it is being taught in class. It will also help ease some stress when you have busy weeks with your other subjects.

Don’t go too far ahead though! You don’t want to get yourself confused.

Do your holiday homework

It is likely that your teacher might have set you some homework for you to complete over the holidays. Don’t neglect it! This homework is designed to prepare you for the first couple of topics in the year, and/or revise some things from last year.

Revise the fundamentals

To do well in Methods, it is vital that you have the fundamentals down pact. You might be able to solve a very difficult integral, but it is not worth being able to do that if you can’t do basic things like adding fractions.

Here are some mathematical concepts that you should review:

Operations with fractions (how to add/subtract/multiply/divide them)
Short division (very important!)
Solving algebraic expressions and being able to manipulate complex equations.

Understand the marking scheme

In maths, you get marks for various things. It may be for working out, writing out formulas, or giving an answer.

To maximise the marks that you get on tests and exams, you need to understand how marks are given. It differs between topics and depends on the question, but here are some general rules:

A one mark question requires a single answer.
A two mark question requires a bit of working and answer. Sometimes, two marks can also mean two answers.
For ‘show that’ questions, you need to show all the required steps to get the answer. This is what will give you full marks.
For some probability questions requiring CAS, writing out the probability statement that you are solving on your CAS is enough to get your working out mark.

Work on speed

The Methods exams and SACs can be very time pressured. Therefore, you should spend time during your break working on speed. Don’t let yourself spend 10 minutes on a one mark question! If you work on it from now, you will become quicker at solving problems come exam time.

Hopefully this article gave you some inspiration for things you can do to prepare for the year. Don’t stress too much if you don’t have time to do all these things before Year 12 Methods begins – you can also consider doing these throughout the first term. All the best for Year 12 Methods!