Exam time for students can become incredibly stressful, and often this extra stress doesn’t help with the progression of their studying or mental well-being. This is especially true for year 12s and the high stakes associated with a lot of their exams. So I thought I’d share some things that I found helpful in high school to prepare for my exams, which could be helpful for tutoring students as well.

The first one was creating an exam timetable. This means using a calendar and not only adding in your exams, but also allocating time to study for certain subjects to ensure you cover everything. A really great online calendar I found was Notion because it sets out your weeks really clearly, and allows you to add to-do lists under each event. A calendar can help mental stress greatly as students can see when their exams are, as well as the steps and study sessions they should be taking in order to be prepared. This way no exams or assignments can be forgotten and will jump out the week before it’s due.

To-do lists are another great way of studying and reducing overwhelm. To-do lists, whether by subject or by topic can help break down the studying of large pieces of content and allow more effective progress. It is a lot easier to check off 15 minutes of practice questions over finishing an entire chapter. The feeling of checking off tasks is also incredibly satisfying and creates a motivation to complete tasks.

Another way to reduce stress around exams is finding effective ways to study. I found that active recall was a very effective study method across all my subjects. Further, I found that practice exams and exam-style questions were incredibly effective for maths and chemistry. Practice body paragraphs and 5 minute essay plans were also really helpful for English. It is important to find study techniques that work to help students reassure themselves they have prepared effectively. I hope this was helpful!

Isabella Mackay