How to help your teen prepare for January exams amid holiday chaos
Practical pointers to help your teen prepare for upcoming exams and get through the holiday season in one piece.
As if the holiday season didn’t involve enough organisation, perhaps your teen has exams in early January and you are desperate to help them get through their exams in one piece.
Today I want to offer up some practical suggestions to help your teen make sure they at least pass their exams while still making time for some special family time.
Are we allowed to have fun?!
You might be asking yourself, if exams are only three or so weeks away, are we allowed to have a break over the holidays?! Is my teen allowed to have some fun as well as study?
Absolutely. Studying effectively does not mean studying 24/7.
It does however, mean organisation.
The best way to make sure your teen gets through everything they need to in time for their exams is to make an Exam Study Timetable.
If their exams are only a few weeks away, I suggest they get onto this step pronto.
An Exam Study Timetable does not need to be a work of art, there just needs to be one.
The most important part: To help your teen study productively over the coming weeks while still making time to enjoy the holidays, their Exam Study Timetable should of course set out when and what they are going to study, but crucially, it should also designate those times when they aren’t going to study — i.e. whenever you are having special family time and important events on the calendar.
Having their time scheduled out like this when they are in the pressure cooker situation of looming exams is a massive stress reliever and organisation life-saver.
Having designated times for studying and having fun / family time in their timetable will help your teen be accountable to their studying when they are supposed to be studying, and on the flip side, will help them (and you) to enjoy the break time guilt free — after all, the timetable is telling them it’s time to have fun!
This post from last month tells you everything you need to know about Exam Study Timetables, and includes the link to my free printout that you can download right now over at cramlab.org/free-downloads.
What if they have left studying until the last minute?
If this is the situation your teen is in, then they need to use their time even more wisely.
I still strongly suggest they make an Exam Study Timetable to help plan out their time. Without a timetable, they will be more prone to feeling overwhelmed by everything they have to get through, which can lead to paralysing inertia rather than productivity.
Next, they need use the precious time they have to focus on the key topics of each subject they have an exam in.
These key topics are the ones most likely to come up in the exam, and most likely to yield the most number of marks.
In fact, whether or not your teen is cramming (but especially if they are), focusing on the key topics during exam study is one of the most important things they can do.
Effective studying requires having a strategy, and that strategy needs to have the exam itself at the centre.
Otherwise, your teen runs the risk of studying in a way that doesn’t have a clear purpose or direction, which results in perhaps knowing a lot of information, but potentially, information that won’t be useful for the exam.
So to that end, do not encourage cramming everything there possibly is to know. That is not studying smart, which is what your teen needs to do with the limited time available.
Practice questions
Another important aspect of exam preparation, regardless of how much time your teen has, is to make time for practice questions and past exams.
The act of actually practising answering questions is an essential element of exam study, because applying what you know to answer a specific question is what the exam will require your teen to do.
Exam questions don’t simply ask, hey tell us everything you know about William The Conqueror.
They require your teen to apply what they know, not just simply regurgitate information.
If your teen doesn’t have some already, I strongly suggest they get their hands on some resources that contain past exam papers and / or practice questions similar to those likely to come up in their exams.
Even if your teen is really struggling — actually — especially if they are struggling, having a go at some practice questions once they have gone over a topic will make them much more likely to give a solid exam answer.
If they don’t have a look at practice questions before the real exams, they run the risk of being blindsided but an unexpected approach to questions and not anticipating the length of the exam or hardness level of the questions, and these are all aspects of an exam your teen needs to be prepared for.
As with all my study tips, these suggestions are practical and simple and are things that any teen can do.
By getting organised and focusing on the most important topics, even if your teen is struggling and will be happy to scrape a pass, it’s not too late to get some high octane studying done over the coming weeks, without sacrificing some fun times with the fam.
As a parent, you may not be able to do Algebra, but you can help — you can help your teen make their Exam Study Timetable, you can support and encourage them to stick to it, and you can have fun with them during their breaks.
No one needs, or should, study 24/7.
Wishing your teen all the very best with their studying and thanks for reading.
Clare
P.S. If you haven’t already, I strongly suggest you have a look through my Archive of posts, as I have written an absolute tonne about all aspects of studying, and chances are, especially if your teen is just starting out with their studying journey, I will have written about whatever it is they’re struggling with.
P.P.S. Cramlab.org also has a tonne of free resources at cramlab.org/study-system, cramlab.org/free-downloads, and also my free Learning Styles Quiz which will help your teen figure out what study techniques are more likely to work for them.