With the holiday season nearing, school mornings are freezing and ANHS students are stressing. In order to get to the delightful winter break students yearn for, they must take the midterm exams that test all of their knowledge since the start of the fall semester. The ultimate solution to get the best out of midterms is exam preparation.
Freshman students will be taking high school midterms for the first time, which can be nerve wracking and intimidating because such a large portion of their grade relies on these very exams. Transitioning from middle school to high school was certainly difficult during the first week of school and unfortunately, freshmen will have to relive it all again to prepare for their finals in the last week of the fall semester.
Maddie Froeberg (9) expresses, “I’d say I’m most worried about either my Honors Biology or Honors English I Final. Honors English because of the quantity of literary terms that I need to identify and know the definitions of, and Honors Biology because of how overwhelmingly detailed we learned about processes like photosynthesis and cellular respiration. For studying, memorization usually helps me a lot, starting with the specific concepts that I struggle on, then reviewing it all more broadly as a whole. After completing that, I like doing a quick recap before class to keep any last problem areas fresh in my mind and have everything I need all set.”
For some students, the most difficult part about exam preparation is gathering up the motivation to start studying because of how overwhelming it is to go over the overall material in all classes. A recently-proven method to be effective for such cases is active recalling, which is a studying technique that involves retreiving information based on memory. Rather than re-reading textbooks, active recalling truly allows students to reproduce the information they are familiar with and test their understanding, so they can further expand on their knowledge in fuzzy areas.
Many tests require memorization on the material and a popular memorization method on social media is blurting. The first step to blurting is gathering all notes to become more familiar with the topic and then writing down all the information retained on a lined piece of paper by memory. Afterwards, look over the notes and write any missed concepts on the “blurting” paper and repeat the process until all the information can be recalled by the time finals roll in.
By the end of the day, finals are inevitable, but they are not the end of the world; students will get through finals and reward themselves with a break they deserve no matter what scores they receive. Finals truly make the high school experience memorable and worth looking back to in the future.
Guidance Counselor Ms. Liegler advises students with her favorite pieces of advice for midterms: “Don’t leave studying for your midterms to be last minute. Also, forming a study group with your friends is a good way to become more familiar with the material when you have other people to bounce ideas off of. I know it’s stressful, but the study aspect could be fun and it will be easier to remember the information if you change your mindset.”
