Year 12 2019

[JP12345]

Hi,
I don’t know if this is the right place to post this question.. 🙃
Just wondering though, I’m about to start year 12 content term 4 (hsc 2019). I do 2u maths but I would say it is my weakest subject, however I am performing well in most other subjects. I have been just passing maths exams and feel like I’m behind in yr 11 content. Going into year 12 I now feel unprepared to some extent for maths as I know it builds on assumed knowledge.
Is there enough time to achieve above 90% in maths this coming term (yr 12 term 1) provided the right mentality and study skills and how would this best be achieved?
Thanks so much and good luck 2018 HSC students!

[8veFable]

Hi!

For me personally, I used to be quite average at mathematics in prelim and got around a rank of 30 by my HY, so pretty much in the middle of my cohort. But by trials I managed to get into the top 10 by doing some things that I hope may help you personally:

1. The most important thing I did for me was to sort of seek to understand the content deeply rather than trying to memorise formulae. I did this a lot by watching videos by Eddie Woo (<3) who goes into more detail than what is really needed like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tt2DGYOi3hc
I found that this video really changed my outlook on mathematics as well. Here, he says that calculus shouldn't be the memorisation of rules and he implies that it should actually be understood, and that sort of mindset is something I tried to carry with all other topics I tackled.

I pretty much watched more of his videos on the commute to and from school and sometimes in my spare time. I found doing the questions and learning about other topics became easier overtime.

I guess since you might want to revise on prelim stuff you might be able to find some of his videos online? :O

But doing something like this would mean you would have to sacrifice your commute or other spare time so I didn't do this for all topics but it helped a lot in my of understanding 2U maths and remembering it
EDIT: Watching it on 1.25x, 1.5x or 2.0x speed + captions helped with the time-management for me 
EDIT2: omg i found the first video I watched for this purpose and I think it was this guy's series on calculus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BuIVJ558RY and first principle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsqmAJ7Qyf8 he blew my mind 
EDIT3: OMG AGAIN sorry for absolutely inundating you with videos but this one really encapsulates the mindset that Eddie Woo talks about: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YJSDJGyIaU

2. I asked tons of questions. Like. The sort of kid that stays behind at recess and lunch for a bit every single time to ask the teacher questions about stuff that I didn't understand, and that also helped me with understanding some questions I had absolutely no idea.

3. Past-exam questions by topic are really good! One resource I find amazing for this is the Success One HSC Mathematics Past Paper + Solutions book. It's suuuper helpful by the fact that in the front and back pages it has a list of all topics, all the questions asked from 1992 onwards in the HSC exam on that topic, and the page number to do it (highly recommended  ). I just find that doing some exam type questions after/during learning a topic on that topic in the HSC is really sweet in getting more confident at it.

[JP12345]

Hi!

For me personally, I used to be quite average at mathematics in prelim and got around a rank of 30 by my HY, so pretty much in the middle of my cohort. But by trials I managed to get into the top 10 by doing some things that I hope may help you personally:

1. The most important thing I did for me was to sort of seek to understand the content deeply rather than trying to memorise formulae. I did this a lot by watching videos by Eddie Woo (<3) who goes into more detail than what is really needed like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tt2DGYOi3hc
I found that this video really changed my outlook on mathematics as well. Here, he says that calculus shouldn't be the memorisation of rules and he implies that it should actually be understood, and that sort of mindset is something I tried to carry with all other topics I tackled.

I pretty much watched more of his videos on the commute to and from school and sometimes in my spare time. I found doing the questions and learning about other topics became easier overtime.

I guess since you might want to revise on prelim stuff you might be able to find some of his videos online? :O

But doing something like this would mean you would have to sacrifice your commute or other spare time so I didn't do this for all topics but it helped a lot in my of understanding 2U maths and remembering it
EDIT: Watching it on 1.25x, 1.5x or 2.0x speed + captions helped with the time-management for me 
EDIT2: omg i found the first video I watched for this purpose and I think it was this guy's series on calculus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BuIVJ558RY and first principle: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KsqmAJ7Qyf8 he blew my mind 
EDIT3: OMG AGAIN sorry for absolutely inundating you with videos but this one really encapsulates the mindset that Eddie Woo talks about: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YJSDJGyIaU

2. I asked tons of questions. Like. The sort of kid that stays behind at recess and lunch for a bit every single time to ask the teacher questions about stuff that I didn't understand, and that also helped me with understanding some questions I had absolutely no idea.

3. Past-exam questions by topic are really good! One resource I find amazing for this is the Success One HSC Mathematics Past Paper + Solutions book. It's suuuper helpful by the fact that in the front and back pages it has a list of all topics, all the questions asked from 1992 onwards in the HSC exam on that topic, and the page number to do it (highly recommended  ). I just find that doing some exam type questions after/during learning a topic on that topic in the HSC is really sweet in getting more confident at it.

Hi 8veFable!

Sorry for the late reply but thanks a lot for the time it took you to help answer the question. 😄 Eddie Woo really is fantastic! Hopefully I can improve my maths marks?!

All the best.

[Gracie22222222222]

Hi! Although I don't study maths, I study accelerated French Continuers so I'll be sitting that HSC this year. I just want to tell you it is absolutely possible to increase your marks, especially when you have a whole year to improve and learn from your mistakes (as well as learn new content  ).

I personally received 4th out of 9 people in my first assessment and 78% to receiving 94% in my trials overall (96% in the section I previously got 78% in!). I totally agree with what was said above! You are so much better off accepting your errors now and asking questions than waiting for the exam to tell you that you don't understand the content.

Tracking past papers is key as well as marking them and reading the criteria. If you don't understand something, ask your teacher. With something like maths, you can, to a certain extent, do past papers as you go. Try a section or topic test if you haven't learnt enough content/ aren't ready to do a whole one.  Try timed, untimed, with and without notes.

Ask your teacher for advice! In a way, it can be much more gratifying for you as a student to see your growth over the year and increase in exam performance. Try tracking your feedback and marks in a file on your computer or in a notebook. One tip: mark yourself harshly. It is so much better to have too many steps in a maths problem than too little (but read the criteria because you do want to try to be just right).

Another tip: keep a growth mindset. Use your 'failures' (because that word can be quite negative) to motivate you. In fact, I miscalculated my average before my trials to make it ten percent lower than it was (yay we love someone who doesn't do maths ). This made me think there was no way of me achieving a good mark so I worked SO HARD for my trials. Now looking back, I can tell you that this was a massive motivator.

Please tell me if you want any other motivation tips I'm holding back a bit because I'm quite a languages fanatic so I don't want to confuse you

One of my teachers once said to me 'the hard work puts you where the good luck can find you'. Wishing you well for the year ahead and never think it is too late to improve (I have heard of people improving exponentially between the trials and HSC!).