You’ve set out your study schedule, and now it’s time to build your study plan. This is one of the most effective ways to help you navigate as you journey towards the selective entry exam.
What’s the difference between a study plan and a study schedule?
Your study schedule is your weekly calendar that sets out all your commitments: for example, school, extracurriculars like sport or music, as well as study time at home or with a tutor.
A study plan is an overarching plan that takes into account your existing strengths and weaknesses and structures your weekly efforts so that your deficiencies have more time spent on them than areas you already have an aptitude for.
This is one of the key strategies to doing well on the selective entry exam: it’s easy to fall into the trap of giving equal attention to each of the areas, but if your numerical reasoning is already strong while your reading comprehension is abysmal, you won’t perform well enough at exam time to ensure you get the place at your dream school.
Assessing your current level
Given how important it is to analyse your current strengths and weaknesses in order to create an effective study plan, it can be confronting working out how to identify them. One of the easiest ways is to take a mock exam, and see how you perform. Our mini-mock exam is a good example of the style to look for.
Even better is to have an exam expert go through your results with you. With their extensive knowledge and experience, the exam expert can pick up patterns in your answers that identify which foundational concepts you might be struggling with, and suggest strategies to help you deal with them. Integral offers a free diagnostic test and feedback session with our exam experts for exactly this situation.
Analysing your abilities in this way allows you to work smarter, not harder. If you try to cover everything, you will be overwhelmed and the quality of your efforts will go down.
Building the plan
Once you have your strengths and weaknesses identified and analysed, it’s time to build your study plan and break it down for your study schedule.
You should now know the level your student is currently at and the level that they need to reach, so start breaking down the concepts that need to be covered into a long term study schedule.
An important part of this process is regular assessment and evaluations – you need to know how you are progressing in improving your weak areas. Mock exams are a great measure of this, particularly as you get closer to the exam date. These have the additional benefit of letting your child experience the pressure and stress of exam conditions.
Consistent, persistent study is the best habit to instil in your child as preparation for the Victorian selective entry exam, but to make that study the most efficient and effective, make sure you have a thoroughly thought-through study plan. If you’d like more advice, reach out to one of our exam experts for a chat.
