First Education

Most lecture notes never get looked at again. Students write them, file them, and rediscover them the night before an exam as a pile of incomplete sentences and mysterious abbreviations that no longer mean anything. If this sounds familiar, the problem is probably not your memory. It is your note-taking strategy.

The purpose of notes is not to transcribe what was said. A recording can do that. The purpose of notes is to help your brain process and encode information in real time, and to create a resource that helps you reconstruct understanding later. These are two different jobs, and good notes have to do both at once.

One of the most effective frameworks is the Cornell method. You divide each page into three sections: a narrow column on the left for cues and keywords, a wider column on the right for your main notes during the lecture, and a box at the bottom for a summary written in your own words after class. The summary section is the part most students skip, and it is the most important. Writing a summary forces your brain to consolidate what it just heard while the information is still warm.

Beyond structure, the single biggest improvement most students can make is to write less and think more. Instead of trying to capture every word, focus on capturing the logic. What is the main argument? What evidence supports it? How does this connect to what was covered last week? Notes that reflect your own thinking are almost always more useful than notes that reflect the speaker’s exact words.

Finally, review your notes within 24 hours. Research consistently shows that a short review the day after a lecture dramatically improves long-term retention. It takes ten minutes and it makes a measurable difference.

Misha Fry

Teaching phonics in Year 1 is one of the most important steps in helping children become confident readers and writers. At this stage, students are moving beyond recognising letters and beginning to understand how sounds work together to make words. Phonics gives them the tools to decode unfamiliar words instead of guessing from pictures or memory.

A strong phonics lesson should be clear, short and practical. Young students learn best when they can hear, say, see and use the sound. For example, when teaching the sound “sh”, students should listen to the sound, practise saying it, identify it in words like ship, shop and fish, and then read and write simple words containing that sound. This helps them connect spoken language with written language.
Repetition matters. Human brains, apparently unsatisfied with learning things once, need regular practice. Daily phonics routines help students build automatic recognition of sounds and spelling patterns. Activities such as sound sorting, blending games, word building with letter cards, and reading decodable texts can make practice more engaging.

Blending is especially important in Year 1. Students need to practise saying each sound in a word and then pushing the sounds together. For example, c-a-t becomes cat. Segmenting is the reverse skill: students hear a word and break it into sounds before spelling it.

It is also important to use decodable readers that match the phonics sounds students have already learned. This lets children experience success because they are using skills they have been taught, not just guessing wildly and hoping literacy happens by accident. With explicit teaching, consistent practice and encouraging feedback, Year 1 students can develop strong phonics knowledge. These early skills create the foundation for fluent reading, accurate spelling and greater confidence across all learning areas.

Anthea Preketes

Travel has a unique way of expanding both perspective and understanding. It is often associated with new places, new people, and new experiences, but at its core, travel is also about commitment and intention. Whether it’s a long journey across countries or a short commute across suburbs, every trip requires time, planning, and purpose.There is a quiet beauty in the process of travelling. The anticipation before leaving, the organisation behind the scenes, and even the routine of getting from one place to another all contribute to the experience. Travel invites us to step outside of our immediate environment and engage with something different. It teaches adaptability, patience, and awareness qualities that extend far beyond the journey itself.

Even smaller-scale travel, like heading to a scheduled lesson or appointment, carries this same structure. Time is set aside, routes are planned, and energy is invested to ensure arrival at the right place, at the right time. These journeys may feel routine, but they still represent a conscious effort to show up and engage.
The beauty of travelling also lies in its one-directional nature. Once time has been spent on a journey, it cannot be reclaimed. A trip taken, whether long or short, becomes part of the day’s investment. This is why intention matters, choosing to travel somewhere means prioritising that destination over other possibilities.
In many ways, travel reflects respect for the destination, for the people involved, and for the purpose behind the journey. When both sides of an arrangement honour that commitment, the experience feels seamless and worthwhile. When that intention is missing, the journey can feel incomplete, as though the purpose behind it has been lost. Ultimately, travel is more than just movement. It is a reflection of how we value time, effort, and connection. Whether it leads to a new country or simply across town, every journey carries meaning, and that meaning is shaped by the intention we bring to it.

Angelina Castelli

Watching Thomas teach bearings was a useful reminder of how much sequencing matters in maths tutoring. The lesson was not just about getting the right answer, it was about helping the student understand what each angle represented before calculating.

The most valuable part of the lesson was watching how Thomas connected bearings to triangle geometry. Once the diagram was drawn, the question became less about memorising a “bearings method” and more about using angle facts properly. The student had to recognise corresponding angles, angles on a straight line, and finally the angle sum of a triangle. This reaffirmed something I have noticed through tutoring: students often struggle less with the final calculation and more with translating the diagram into familiar maths.

Thomas also gave the student time to explain their reasoning, rather than immediately correcting mistakes. That made the lesson feel more collaborative and helped reveal where the confusion actually was. It reminded me that good tutoring is not about showing how quickly you can solve a question. It is about slowing the problem down enough for the student to see the structure themselves.

Overall, observing the lesson reinforced the importance of clear diagrams, repeated key rules, and patient questioning. Bearings can look intimidating, but when compass directions, true bearings and triangle angle facts are linked carefully, the process becomes more logical.

Nabil Harrar

Engineering sits at the quiet center of modern life. It’s there when your alarm goes off, when clean water runs from the tap, when a plane crosses the sky, and when a message travels instantly across the world. Most of the time, you don’t notice it, and that’s exactly the point.

At its core, engineering is about solving problems with constraints. You don’t get unlimited time, money, or materials. You work with what’s available and still aim for something that’s safe, efficient, and reliable. That balance—between creativity and practicality—is what makes engineering different from pure science.

There’s also a human side to it. Every design decision affects people, whether it’s a bridge that needs to withstand decades of use or software that millions rely on daily. Good engineering isn’t just about what work, it’s about what works responsibly.

It’s easy to think of engineering as equations and diagrams, but it’s really about impact. From renewable energy to medical devices to space exploration, engineers shape how we live now and what becomes possible next.

Starsky Schepers

We’re often taught to treat learning like collecting. Gather the notes, memorise the facts, and store the information neatly for later. But what if learning isn’t about storage at all? What if it’s about creation?

Imagine your brain as a studio instead of a storage unit. A place where ideas are sketched, reshaped, layered, and sometimes completely scrapped before something meaningful emerges. In a studio, things get messy. There are half finished drafts, crossed out mistakes, and experiments that don’t quite work. But that’s not failure. That’s the process of making something original.

The same applies to learning. When you’re solving a problem, writing an essay, or trying to understand a concept, you’re not just recalling information. You’re building connections. You’re taking pieces of knowledge and turning them into something that makes sense to you. That’s creativity, not just memory.

Some of the most powerful learning moments come from getting it wrong first. Not because mistakes are “good” in a cliché sense, but because they force your brain to adapt. When something doesn’t work, your mind starts searching for a new pathway. That’s where real understanding is formed, not in perfect answers, but in the effort it takes to reach them.

As a tutor, I’ve seen students transform when they stop aiming for perfection and start engaging with the process. When they begin to ask, “What can I do with this?” instead of “How do I get this right?” everything changes. Learning becomes less about pressure and more about possibility.

So next time you sit down to study, don’t think of yourself as someone trying to store information. Think of yourself as someone creating meaning. Let it be messy. Let it take time. Let it be yours.

Because learning isn’t about how much you can hold. It’s about what you can make.

Isabella Naumovski

One thing I’ve noticed a lot with students is that revision usually only starts once schools officially hand out exam notifications. For Years 7 to 10 especially, students often only get about two weeks notice before exams, so mentally they treat that as the point where studying begins. Then suddenly everyone is stressed, tired, and trying to relearn an entire term’s worth of content in a few nights.

But realistically, students can start revision way earlier without doing anything extreme. Even just revising topics as they finish in class makes a huge difference later on. That way, when those two weeks before exams finally arrive, students can spend their time actively studying through practice questions and applying knowledge instead of trying to understand the content properly for the first time.
The funny thing is most students are not actually lazy. A lot of them fully intend to study earlier, but because exams feel far away, revision keeps getting pushed back. Especially with maths and science subjects, that becomes a problem pretty quickly because topics build on each other. If one thing gets missed early on, everything after it starts feeling harder too. What usually works best is not even intense studying. The students who seem the calmest during exam periods are normally just doing small amounts of revision consistently throughout the term.

At the end of the day, exams are always going to be stressful to some extent. But there is a massive difference between normal exam nerves and full panic from trying to learn everything at the last minute. Starting earlier usually does not just improve marks either, it makes the whole exam period feel far less overwhelming.

Lily Powell

A lot of students think doing practice exams just means smashing out as many papers as possible. But the truth is, it’s not about how many you do, it’s about how you use them. Done properly, practice exams can be one of the most effective ways to improve your marks.

The biggest mistake students make is finishing a paper, checking the answers quickly, and moving on. That doesn’t actually help much. The real improvement comes from going back through your mistakes and figuring out why you got things wrong. Was it a silly error, a timing issue, or something you didn’t fully understand. That’s where the learning happens.

Practice exams also train your brain for the real thing. Sitting down for a full paper helps you get used to the pressure, the timing, and staying focused for a long period. It stops exams from feeling unfamiliar or overwhelming. By the time the real exam comes around, it just feels like another paper.

They’re also great for spotting patterns. You start to notice the types of questions that come up again and again. In subjects like maths and English, this is huge. You begin to understand what markers are actually looking for, which makes your answers more structured and confident.

Another big benefit is time management. A lot of students know the content but struggle to finish exams. Practice papers help you learn how long to spend on each question and when to move on.

At the end of the day, practice exams aren’t just revision. They’re training. If you take the time to review your mistakes, understand your weak spots, and learn from each paper, you’ll see real improvement. It’s one of the smartest ways to study, especially in the lead up to big exams like trials or the HSC.

Eireyna Papinyan

History is one of the ‘big four’ subjects in school, alongside Mathematics, English and Science. Unfortunately, history has seen a great decline in schools.

History used to be much more comprehensive and deep. Students would examine the major events of European and world history such as the rise of the ancient civilisations, complex evolutions of social and governmental systems (feudalism, liberalism, democracy, oligarchy, monarchy, communism, capitalism), great personalities such as Napoleon, Augustus, Constantine, von Bismarck, Churchill, Justinian, Charlemagne, etc., the rise of Christianity and Islam, the great European revolutions, the World Wars, etc.

However, throughout my entire high school career, in which I was determined to take as many history classes as possible, I never studied these events in great detail with the exception of the Second World War (in Europe), Russia, and some other isolated periods.

The focus has been on learning skills and writing, but this has lead to a decline in the comprehensiveness and breadth of content. I feel that this is detrimental to the study of history, because most people want to learn history in order to learn more about the nations and peoples of the world. Instead, this is diluted in favour of preparing for systematic assessments like the HSC.

Learning should be for the sake of learning, not for exam marks. Learn history!

Raphael Dokos

In terms of studying for exams there’s definitely a gap between knowing something, and having the ability to retrieve that knowledge under the pressure of an exam environment. Whereas textbooks, and note-highlighting only go so far; completed past papers are universally seen as the highest standard for revising, simply because they involve the transition from passive to active recall.

Active Recall at its finest:
As well as causing your brain to work to retrieve information, as opposed to simply recognizing it in an exam paper (and building stronger neural pathways), examiners are predictable, and after completing a couple of years of papers you begin to understand the nature of them, the types of questions that come up, and importantly how the marking scheme works. Here, you not only understand ‘what’ to learn but also ‘how’ to answer.
The art of not so much the information but the practicalities:
Beyond all the topic knowledge past papers are crucial in helping students overcome the ‘hidden’ difficulties of the exam;
Time Management. Being able to complete questions in a limited time prevents them from getting stuck on a particular low-mark question.
Knowledge gaps identified. A practice test gives a “progress test”, showing where a student knows the material, and what topics require more immediate attention.
Reducing anxiety. Obviously everyone knows what an exam looks like, down to the font size on the questions, and the instructions on the front cover, thus reducing student cortisol levels, allowing them to be clearer thinkers.
An exam is just a performance, no different to any other, so no more would a musician practice for an upcoming gig just by reading the sheet music than would a student revise an exam by just by reading textbooks. They transform information into a skill to be employed on ‘game day’.

Ella Fisher