Welcome to the fifth InThinking Physics 'Silent Podcast', written back and forth by Emma and Tim in a shared document. We welcome your suggestions for future topics: put your questions (whether timely or timeless) in the Comments.

Episode 4 was all about classroom differentiation and how to support learning in diverse DP Physics cohorts.

Preparing for assessment feels almost equally daunting, so Emma asked Tim to tackle this topic this week!

Emma

The exams are changing this year. Should students’ exam preparation strategies be changing too?

Tim

Yes absolutely - I have the feeling that perhaps we have always got it wrong. I know I have. Typically in my experience, in the months leading up to the exam, teachers drown the students in past paper questions taking a topic at a time.  If the students are unable to answer a question or they get it wrong, the response is often to give them the right answer and then more questions to attempt.   Some students get given the markscheme to check the right answer themselves. 

The trouble with this approach is that past papers questions are, by definition, summative assessment tasks.  Just giving them the answer doesn't necessarily help them build the problem solving techniques that they need when facing the questions in the “live” exam. There's also the issue of how the IB markschemes are presented.  They are written for Physics teachers to understand a possible route through the problem and where students can gain credit.  They are definitely not model or ideal answers.  

When students have direct access to the markschemes, they often think that this is how they should lay out their answer. This is not true! There's a lovely (true) story of a student who had such good visual memory he went back through all the past markschemes that he could find on the web.  His plan was to learn the correct answers and reproduce them in the school exams he was about to sit. He was caught out because he include “OWTTE” in his answer - he didn't know what it meant but that he remembered it was in the official IB markscheme for that question! Nice try.

Emma

What do students traditionally do the night before the exam?

Tim

Such a good question!  In my experience, most students spend their time going over the formulae and trying to remember facts: laws and equations.  Their belief is that if they can remember enough then they are going to achieve high marks. This is true is some exams but sadly this is not the case in IB exams.  In the first Silent Podcast, I was going on about the Assessment Objectives (AO) - the things that the IB examining team are allowed to test in an exam.  

AO1 is about remembering stuff - e.g. can you remember the definition of momentum?
AO2 is about applying things in a straight-forward situation e.g. if I give you mass and acceleration, can you work out the force?
AO3 is about problem solving e.g. If I give you mass, acceleration and area of contact, can you work out the pressure?  A two (or more) stage problem.
AO4 is about bringing all of the above into doing a scientific investigation.

The written papers are focused on A01, AO2 & AO3.  It's really important for the students to realize that 50% or the marks on the written papers are going be targeting AO3. In other words, half the paper is going to be the toughest problem solving that they can expect to meet.  Having said that, it's not all bad news.  Nobody expects a candidate to be able to solve all the problems they come across in the time they have in the exam.  You can get a third wrong and still get a 6!

This is so different to what most students have met in many (non-IB) exam that they sit aged sixteen.  Typically if you learn lots of facts, and can remember them in the exam, you will do OK.  Often students have learned that the last minute revision of facts on the night before the exam worked when they were sixteen.  It's so hard to convince them that the same approach isn't going to help them with the IB DP exams. 

Emma

What should they be doing?

Tim

Having said what I did earlier, going through the data booklet and reminding themselves of the formulae is kind-of OK.  Should they focus on learning facts the night before the exam?  No.  Should they be going over past questions, reviewing their problem solving "tool-kit" etc?  Yes.  In this context, a deep understanding of the formulae in the data booklet (what they mean and the situations to which they apply) could be a good start. 

In an ideal world, in the build up to the exam, they have been identifying and capturing approaches that can get them out of being stuck.  Tricks like “What are the energy changes going on in this situation & can that help me solve the problem?”; or “If I can't see how to work out the answer they want, what could I work out from the information that I've been given?”.  The night before the exam is the right time to review their list of problem solving tools that have worked in the past (or create one).

Emma

But from the perspective of a teacher, what does a revision of AO3 look like?

Tim

Rather than approaching revision as a topic based thing - week one: start with a whole pile of past questions on A1, followed by lots of questions on A2 etc., I would recommend looking at past questions with a conceptual lens.  This would be more like - week one: start with a whole pile of questions where the concept of energy conservation is used.  This would be followed in a different week looking at questions where swapping between micro and macro perspectives helps etc.  Effectively this is synoptic revision - ensuring that the focus is on reinforcing a deep conceptual understanding rather than reinforcing the learning of information. 

Of course, the updated InThinking revision site at StudyIB.net aims to sort this all out.  However, I think I've just set myself the task of going through pass papers to identify specific possible synoptic questions that help.  Watch this space.  The good news is that the revision site has just / is about to go live after a few weeks of being off line!  Right?

Emma

Yes - and it would be great to get feedback from subscribers as what works and what else is needed in their opinion. My students have already made a start at creating their own list of problem solving tools that have worked in the past - time to share that list amongst the whole group.

Tim

Yes please. It would be great to see what they have come up with.