one week to go until exams

Sunday 26 April 2015

Here is an activity that I have found to be very effective revision for Maths HL exams.

I have written 10 exam questions for section A of a Paper 1 practice (mock) exam and and another 10 questions for section A of a Paper 2 practice exam. All the questions are 'original' questions - although some of them are similar to a past IB exam question, none of them are actually past exam questions. I have written full worked solutions for all the questions.

What I find very effective to do with students - especially at this time with only a week to go before the May exam session begins - is to have them sit for about 70 min in a classroom with me. We spend about 10 minutes reading through the 10 questions - making mental notes (similar to what they should do during the 5-min 'reading time' they get for each exam); but we do this as a group activity. Then I write a time interval on the board for each question indicating a target "schedule" for doing each question with the # of minutes corresponding to the # of marks. After they start working I will indicate when each time period for each question has expired. Of course, they do not have to stick precisely to this schedule - but it does help them realize if their pace is about right or too slow - and whether they will be forced to skip any questions.

After the students have finished I give them the worked solutions and they go away to review the work / answers that they were able to do in the 60 minutes. I invite them to discuss any questions they may have after they read through the worked solutions.

Clcik here to go to Sets of HL Review Exercises page (Assessment > Exams > Review Materials > Sets of HL Review Exercises) where you will find the set of 10 Paper 1 Section A questions and the set of 10 Paper 2 Section A questions - and Worked Solutions for both.  Although they are not full mock exams (no Section B) i have referred to them as "Mock B".  There is a full "Mock A" exam for HL and SL (both Paper 1 and Paper 2 for both) in the Review Materials section of Assessment > Exams.