Practical Advice for Improving Your Child’s Maths - Part 11 - For The Record

This is a blog post about keeping good notes. If you’re not already bored by that sentence, there’s something wrong with you. However, I have good reason to write about this: keeping good records and notes is one of the most essential yet overlooked aspects of preparing for GCSE Maths. It could make the difference between a pass or a fail.

Keeping Track

I often ask my students when they are preparing for a Maths exam: “How do you revise? When it’s time to sit down and do some work, what is that you actually do?” Of course, in most cases the student has never done any revision so I just get some incoherent mumblings. From the minority of students who have done some work, they usually tell me they sit down and do some questions, either from a textbook or more typically from a past paper. Students tend to take a scattershot, brute-force approach to revision where they sit down and just do something. And, while I am grateful that they have done anything at all, with a small amount of effort they could streamline their revision and get more out of it as a result.

This is where the record-keeping comes in. In this series we have been all about the lowest hanging fruit, the least effort techniques that yield maximum results, and my advice here is no different. Why not get a piece of paper, write the date and write the topic that you have covered next to it. Then the next time you sit down, you can check your record and revise a different topic, to make sure you are covering enough ground. Even better, you could also record how hard you found the topic in case you need to go back and try it again.

(I myself am fanatical about data and record keeping, and in my final year at uni I recorded the amount of time I worked each day almost down to the minute. I still have those records from almost 10 years ago! Clearly that’s overdoing it a little bit but the option is always there)

Over time you build up a record of all the work you’ve done and all the topics you’ve covered. For one thing, it feels good to have physical evidence of all the effort you’ve put in. This can give you the strength to push on through to the end. Secondly, you can start to see patterns in the topics you have found easy and hard and the things you need to focus on more. It’s quite the tool!

(An alternative is to combine an approach like this to an existing revision schedule or calendar: after each day of the calendar you write the topics you’ve covered in maths. It serves the same purpose.)

All The Right Notes

In earlier parts of this series I have mentioned the importance of keeping good notes and I’ll expand on that here. Making your own notes is beneficial in two stages: in the process of making them, and then looking back later.

The process of copying important information out of a textbook into your own notes works on multiple levels. At the very simplest, low-hanging-fruit level, the student has been exposed to the content at least once. They’ve seen it, so when it comes up in an exam it won’t be completely alien nor a shock. Secondly, even the most ardent student will not want to copy every detail from the textbook and this forces some level of engagement: what are the most important details to write down? Now the student is not just seeing the content from the textbook, they are thinking about it.

Once this is done, the student has a set of notes, in their own handwriting. When they get puzzled later they can go back and look at what they themselves wrote to hopefully refresh that topic.

It’s a double whammy. Students get something out of making the notes, and then looking back at them later.

Common Mistakes

I cannot overstate the importance of keeping notes organised. Write the date and title at the beginning of each section (I have even known students keep a contents page to make information easier to track down). I see this go wrong all the time, mainly because young people seem to struggle with the idea of notes being in any sort of order: they simply pick a random page in a notebook and start writing. If you’re a parent overseeing this process your child will almost certainly get it wrong first time - which is fine! Just be patient, explain the right way to do it and why it’s important. If you start this early enough (ideally Year 9 or before) the student will have got the hang of it by the time it matters.

Another thing to watch out for is handwriting. Thankfully we have moved past the Victorian approach of a rap across the knuckles for not dotting your i’s, but some students have such poor handwriting they cannot read it themselves. If an examiner cannot read your handwriting, you risk losing marks even if your working is correct. If a student cannot read their own handwriting it naturally means they are unable to check their own working out or even complete multiple lines of related calculation.

If your child is in this situation (and many, many are) there are two things to do. The student may have a minor coordination disability like dyspraxia, in which case they can qualify for extra time in future exams. This comes in very handy, so it is definitely worth a quick trip to the doctor to see if a diagnosis is possible. A lot of the time this will not be the case, and the student simply does have bad handwriting. I’m not a handwriting expert and you should seek advice for improvement elsewhere, but in my experience it stems broadly from a lack of due care and attention. If the student just slowed down a bit and put some focus on their writing it will probably improve a lot automatically.

This Instagram account I linked in a previous post has a ton of great examples of how beautiful notes can look: https://www.instagram.com/studyable/

To summarise, get organised and stay organised. Keep your notes in good order and during revision make a record of the work you’ve done. Turn your scattershot revision in a sniper rifle. Work smarter, not harder.

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As always, if you have specific questions please contact me directly at jake@jakeharristuition.com