Are you nervous about finishing Year 10 and then entering senior high school? This leap has to be one of the toughest and biggest one that you will encounter in high school, so it is crucial to be ready to tackle the challenges that come with it.

In this article, we will unpack the best ways you, as a Year 10 student, can prepare for and make Year 12 easier for yourself.

Stay on top of your work

In Year 10, you will be introduced to many new concepts that will conceptually be much harder than what you learnt in previous years. Furthermore, the workload will also increase.

So don’t fall behind! Don’t be absent at school too often, catch up on missed lessons ASAP, complete all your homework on time, be more self-directed in your learning, and ask for help whenever you’re having the slightest difficulty understanding something.

Having a solid understanding of the skills and fundamentals you learn in Year 10 is really beneficial, as it puts you ahead and prepares you academically for later years. Like seriously, the basic things I learnt in Year 10 Maths Advanced still come handy in University Maths courses! 

So with all that in mind, studying for around 2 hours each day can set you up really well for the length of study you should be doing in your senior years. Within this time you should be completing homework, revising the core content you learnt that day, and conducting extra research for mastery.

Work hard in everything!

Many schools, like mine, don’t allow students who performed poorly in Year 10 to pick certain subjects in Year 11 and 12, and this can be demotivating especially if you really wanted to study it or needed that subject as a prerequisite for your university course.

For example, my teachers recommended I studied Physics and Biology but not Chemistry, because that wasn’t something I studied hard for and did well in based on my Year 10 grades.

You may be prevented from pursuing higher levels of English and Maths courses if you don't do too well in Year 10. So work hard in everything, especially subjects that are relevant to what you want to pick in Year 11. Working hard is also a skill and attitude that will stay with you forever.

Year 10 is a good time to assess and have a basic idea of which subjects are right for you. It's is a good opportunity to figure out what interests you based on the little taster you received during the year. So, find what you are good at and passionate about, research university degrees and what prerequisites they require, and work on required skills based on this.

Find your learning style

Spend some time in Year 10 figuring out how you learn best. Try doing this early on in the year since the stakes are low and as the year progresses, you can exploit your discovered learning style to improve your grades. Try a different style for each suitable subject and keep track of your grades.

Keep in mind that a particular study technique may only be effective for some subjects but not others. Everyone learns differently and finding out how you learn most effectively will help you know which resources and how you can make the most use of your time in senior years.

You are essentially in competition with yourself and what works for everyone else doesn’t have to work for you and that is okay! It is also a good idea to find which environment helps you work most productively; quiet or loud? Music on or no music? With others or alone? Flashcards or notes?  

Practise writing essays and reports

Essays and reports make up a big chunk of the HSC, VCE, QCE, etc. Most senior subjects, other than Maths, will require you to produce a high quality extended response in a short period of time. Practise writing essays and long responses under exam conditions and ask teachers for feedback. Make sure you also consistently applying this feedback!

Learn essay structures, literary techniques, how to form a logical argument, correct citations practice, and how to use relevant evidence to back up your response. To avoid using common ideas, themes, and evidence, it is important to explore texts and research beyond what you learn in school classes. 

NESA key words

This is something my high school spent so much time addressing during my senior years. NESA key words are the verbs in questions that communicate what needs to be included in the response and what the question means/how to approach the question.

These verbs are super important for all questions, since all short and long answer questions will be asked using these verbs, so it's important to get a hang of them early on. You might find answering some practice questions is a great way to do this. You can find a great selection of Year 10 practice questions for Maths and Science in the ATAR Notes Shop.

You can find this handy table of task word definitions in the back of all of the ATAR Notes Year 10 Topic Tests.

Learn to manage your time well

While Year 10 is kind of like a “training period” for senior years, it is also important to remember that your grades do start fresh in Year 11. This means, this is a good time to learn how to balance academic life with social and extracurricular activities. Stay focused on your work but don’t neglect your physical, social, and mental health. Some things that can help are:

  • Creating timetables and sticking to them
  • Creating to-do lists and rewarding yourself when you complete all listed tasks
  • Relaxing after studying so you have more energy to study for longer
  • Setting realistic academic and personal weekly or daily goals
    • Estimate out how much time each goal might require and adjust this based on how much time it actually took so you are allocating the right amount of time for each activity

Other things that may help include keeping in mind your academic and personal ambitions to keep you motivated. Reflect on what you have achieved in the past and how much time and effort it required for you to put in from your side.

Reflect on what you failed to achieve and why, so you know how to fix it next time.

I hope you found this article helpful. I wish you the very best in figuring out what works for you and what doesn’t and I hope you succeed in achieving your goals!