It's Not Too Late: How Your Teen Can Nail Their Exams This Year
Practical study tools for helping your teen get ready for end of year exams.
If you’re in the Northern Hemisphere, I hope the beginning of the new school year has got off to a good start. No doubt a busy start — but hopefully everyone is feeling refreshed from the break and has benefited from some fun in the sun.
And if you’re down in the Southern Hemisphere with me, your teen is gearing up for the business end of the school year.
For everyone, exams are only two to three months away. Crickey! That’s only 8-12 weeks people!!
With that time scale very much in mind, I want to share some simple and practical study tips you can help your teen with over the next few months to get their study on track and make sure they’re doing all they can to get the grades they’re actually capable of at the end of year.
Make a plan
Now is the time to sit down with your teen and make a high level plan for their study for the rest of the year.
When do their exams actually start?
When should they start their exam study? (For a deep dive on how much study teen’s should do during the term/semester and for exams check out this previous post)
What subjects are they going to struggle with more than others?
What we want to avoid is the next two months slipping away without any thought being given to exams, only to realise in November / December that there’s a crap tonne of work to do in a very short amount of time.
Make the most of any mock exams
Some teens, unsurprisingly, don’t think mock exams are important and so don’t study for them.
Big mistake. Huge.
If your teen has mock exams before their real ones, I strongly suggest they do some study for them.
Mock exams have some amazing benefits:
The study your teen does for their mock exams is like banking study — that knowledge will have earnt interest by the time the real exams roll around.
The knowledge they get from studying for their mock exams will have a chance to get into their long term memory and be more easily accessible for end of year exams.
They’re invaluable practice for the real thing — they’re a chance to practice APPLYING what your teen has studied to actual exam questions, which is not something they should do for the first time in their real exams.
They will show your teen where their weak spots are — what was harder than they thought? What don’t they understand well enough? Did they finish the exam in time or run out of time before they had answered everything?
They’re invaluable practice for being under pressure. Our brains can do silly things when we’re under pressure, and too many teens miss out on marks in exams because the pressure of the environment gets to them and they make judgements of error. But if they give their mock exams a good go, the real exams should be more familiar and less scary.
Strength in numbers
Studying for exams is tough. I’m not here to pretend that they’re easy or stress-free. That wouldn’t do anyone any good. The key is to have strategies to help your teen cope with the study and the pressure that they’re under.
This is where the whole family can be a huge help. For the next few months, your teen is the Quarterback and the rest of you are their cheerleaders. They’re going to need your support and encouragement.
But it’s hard to know how to help isn’t it? You can’t do the study for them…
But you can do practical helpful things. Apart from all of the things we’ve already disucssed above, you can plan to do fun things around exams too — if you’re able — things like dinners out, going to the movies, mini-golf etc — get your teen out of the house and have some fun and fresh air together.
Having breaks is actually really important, for everyone’s mental health, and for your teen’s study. They need to process what they’re sutdying and let it settle before cramming more in.
And you can help your teen see that exam study is an intense time, but it’s temporary. It’s not forever. Once exams are over they can relax, do fun stuff with their mates, and bask in the extremely satisfying feeling of having tried their hardest.
Exam study is a matter of pain before gain, and it’s a long-term game. The effort your teen puts in now will pay dividends down the track, regardless of what their post-high school pathway is.
Study Resources
Thankfully, we live at a time where study resources are abundant.
From online resources like Khan Academy and GCSE Bitesize (both great regardless of where you live), to physical books full of practice questions specific to your teen’s curriculum, and not mention my free Templates over at cramlab.org/free-downloads — all of these types of resources will set your teen up for exam success.
There’s no need for your teen to sit at their desk staring blankly not knowing what to do — all of these types of resources will help your teen not just learn the content they need to know, but also PRACTICE answering exam questions.
You can help make sure your teen has the study resources they need. There’s truly no need for your teen to not know how to approach their study, there is so much help out there.
And speaking of help — that’s of course what I’m here for as well. You can contact me anytime, email me at clare@cramlab.org, send me a message on Facebook Messenger, or get stuck in to the comments and we’ll sort it out :)
Thanks so much for reading, stoked to have you here.
Clare
P.S. I am SO CLOSE to finishing my first downloadable study guide, The Exam Study Survival Kit, but we’re off to Melbourne on Saturday for a week for fun and a friend’s wedding, so I’ll be putting the final touches on when I return. Very excited to release this guide, as it is essentially my exam study process transposed into an easy to follow guide, so your teen learn how to study for their exams just like I did.
