Our Trial exam practices are central to preparation for the Trials because they psychologically put our students in the space of what it feels like to to be in an exam -priceless in our view.
How do you build confidence and readiness for an event?
Yep that’s right you practice.
Motivational coaches are now regarded as being crucial to excellent performance. One of the key elements in this, is practicing the event in order to maximise performance. Exam practice is crucial to performance on the day. Many students enter the exam space without any strategies at all. This means that the exam inevitably controls them. Students find themselves in a “fight or flight” pattern which means from a brain science point of view that they are not engaging the thinking part of their brain thus they are unable to to successfully negoitate the question or re-call information required to answer questions. Practicing the event allows students to anticipate the challenges associated with exams and not become flustered which leads them to make avoidable mistakes and forget to re-call the required information.
Many years ago we had a student who was so nervous about doing exams she literally threw-up in the exam space. She did this a second time so we arranged a further exam for her and on this occasion she successfully completed the exam. This gave her a fantastic confidence boost and subsequently she completed a successful Trial exam sequence, so much so that she topped the St Vincent’s Modern History exam. Being the great young woman that she was she made a special trip into the office to personally thank us for giving her the exam experience prior to the actual school Trials that allowed her to perform well. There are lots of stories like this. Equally however, there are stories of students who avoided the practice exams and were unequipped to deal with the challenges associated with exam environments.
So if your student announces to you that they are “not ready” for exams they need to understand that exams are part of the training for exams. Better to get a lousy result with us at the office than in the school assembly hall.
Further students are able to found out what they know and what that don’t know in the pressure of the exam setting. This provides the best incentive to commit rigorously to an on-going study program.
This is one of the many reasons that we have Basecamp because it is a complete study program that gives students the opportunity to be practicing under exam conditions.
Finally there are no tricks or potions associated with great exam performance.
How do you prepare for exams? Answer? By doing exams.
Lets support our students by focusing on this activity. This more than any other activity will bring about improved performance.
Fergus
