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March 28, 2024, 09:41:11 pm

Author Topic: What you can do for chemistry these holidays & tips (40+ student)  (Read 3213 times)  Share 

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Cassidyhogi

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Hi hope your holidays are going well. Here is some advice on what to do for chemistry before the school begins. This includes what I did and am grateful for and what I wish I did before Year 12 instead of during the year:
Gather your resources!

   Find online resources including notes, practice questions and free trial exams before the year begins so when preparing for a SAC or test you have multiple resources you can access without wasting any time during school. Look on your school intranet or ask for some from past students.
Revise Year 11 Chemistry- what you need to know for Year 12.
This is important since Units 3 and 4 repeat some concepts and expand upon a few of them. Looking in the Heinemann 1 textbook I suggest that you read through and try some questions from the following chapters: 1-10 (this becomes assumed knowledge that  are tested on implicitly and expected to be used when answering explain questions), 15, 16, 19.2, 19.3, 20 and 21 (introduction to the practical skills required for the practical investigation and exam). Make some brief, simple notes on these topics that you can look back to before learning this in class in Year 12.
Download and print out your own data book.
Your teacher might do this for you as well but it is always good to have one at home and one in your binder so that you don’t waste time looking for it and taking it to and from school. I also kept one on iBooks on my iPad just in case because you are going to need it nearly every lesson and it is great practice for the exam if you know your way around this booklet well.
Print out the study design
This has everything you need to know for your SACs and the exam. Find differences between the new study design and the old one so that you are aware of what you do not need to know and what questions you do not need to do in practice exams. You can use the study design also as revision before a  SAC, like a checklist of what you need to know.
Make a glossary or flash cards.
Chemistry has content that you will need to remember but spending the majority of your time doing checkpoints and practice exams etc. would be more beneficial than creating flashcards during the year. So create flashcards for definitions, laws, rules and formulae during these holidays so you can just grab them and read them on the way to school throughout the year. This can be something you can do while listening to music and relaxing too!
I have uploaded a couple of glossaries and will try to upload all of them (for each area of study) this year
Do your holiday homework!
Even if it is just some small revision from year 11 or you know your teacher won’t check it do it to get ahead of your class! Within the two months of summer holidays that you have your class will have forgotten year 11 chemistry so it is important to have revised it. Also, your teacher would have given it to you for a great reason so do what they say.
Edrolo
Begin watching edrolo for the first area of study or print out their slides and use them as flashcards for the rest of the year. Chemistry edrolo is really good as a second resource and as revision.


Now here are some general tips for the year:
-   Read the textbook!!

I know that you might have bought notes or your teacher makes their notes from the textbook, but reading it yourself is very important because your teacher might not cover all the information and there are some little important things that might appear in SACs and exams that might have been in the book.
-   Find out what your teacher is like.
Do this so that you can adapt to their learning style. Ask past students and friends that may have had them. I felt like my teacher was not always giving all the information when he taught so I realised that I had to be reading the chapter before the class. He also spoke while writing notes and what he said was valuable but I couldn’t write it down because I was busy writing his notes on the board down. A way to get around that is to get someone to write down the board notes while you write down what the teacher says.
-   Revise behind not ahead
During Year 11 whenever I revised ahead for my Year 12 subjects I found myself having to relearn them again because I would forget really easily. What I did instead for chemistry was after a SAC I would revise the previous area of study/studies. This helped because I was retaining information for the long term and I wouldn’t have to spend so much time relearning concepts right before the exam!
-   Complete the Unit 3 and 4 exams during the year.
At the beginning of the year to study for SACs I would complete the specific questions from trial exams. Then I had all these Unit 3 and Unit 4 exams and very limited Unit ¾ exams. So use the past and trials papers from before 2013 for SACs and revision and then use the papers created 2013- for exams. In addition, after completing Unit 3, complete the rest of the Unit 3 papers. (Note: Unit 3 for 2017- is the Unit 4 from ????-2016)
Good luck!!


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Lear

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Re: What you can do for chemistry these holidays & tips (40+ student)
« Reply #1 on: January 09, 2018, 12:45:21 am »
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This is excellent advice. Thank you very much Cassidyhogi
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manthila2000

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Re: What you can do for chemistry these holidays & tips (40+ student)
« Reply #2 on: January 09, 2018, 01:33:12 pm »
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Thank you for the advice. It definitely helped.
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