Supporting Success! Student Reflections and Advice.

Virtual Learning environments have become an integral part of our daily lives.

Our students continue to demonstrate high levels of resilience and adaptability moving between school in person and online. Nevertheless, they remain determined, curious, and motivated in their learning.

Over the next few weeks our newsletter will include learning reflections and advice from many of our TBS Warsaw success stories. Year 12s will have taken the time to share some very useful reflections and advice for our current year 11s who are in the middle of their IGCSE Mock exams. Year 12s are hopeful that their advice will support the current year 11s in reflecting on their learning and revision strategies. In turn providing them time to adapt, set some learning goals and enjoy the journey as they work towards them, ready for their official exams in May and June.

Thank you Maxim for your first contribution (see below)

Paul Mitchell

Maxim Y (Year 12) 

1: You had to navigate your IGCSEs during a difficult period of time - what can you reflect on during this time? what did you do to stay focused? 

In order to stay focused I tried to stay consistent. I believe if you get into a rhythm of doing your homework before the deadlines and consistently participating in class you can cruise through your iGCSE with great grades. Doing your homework the same day you get it helps you manage your time, as you do not have to remember about it later and can focus on other school tasks or your own interests.
Consistently listening and trying to participate in class helps you understand the topics and do well on your exams. At the end of the day the most important thing in iGCSE is consistency, if you consistently put in effort to learn every topic there is nothing that will surprise on the final exams and you will get all the grades that you desire. Another way to stay focused is to think of the big picture, at times you feel burned out and want to stop. Yet if you find the strength to keep going you will improve your perseverance and will cope better with future tasks in iGCSE and in life in general. Therefore, any time you think about quitting just remember what you are studying for, what your efforts will give you in the future and try to find the motivation to keep going. 
 

2: What advice would you share with the current yr 11 or yr 10s about your IGCSEs?  What is some supportive advice that you could share on being successful? 

The best advice I can give is to keep on top of your deadlines and to start revising in advance.  

Firstly do all your homework on time, try doing it as soon as possible, if you can the same day you get it, this way you do not stack your deadlines, meaning at any given point in time you will not have more homework then what was given to you that day. Doing your homework on time and early makes sure you don’t have to worry about it later and gives you more free time to enjoy yourself and do what you want in order to keep a healthy work life balance.
Secondly, revise in advance, especially now more than ever remember to revise in advance. Instead of revising the day before staying up late at night trying to revise, you should go to sleep early the day before the exam in order to have a clear mind. You can achieve this by revising in advance. How I did this during my iGCSE is through a follow up method. When starting a new topic you take one week to learn the topic concepts, then move on to a second pass, every day afterwards briefly look at the notes you took during the lesson. Therefore, you passively revise as you go through everything you learn, one week after learning something you get a recap in order to solidify your knowledge. By the time your topic test comes about you will get a warning in advance, usually one week. This means that if you follow the scheme of doing a recap one week after learning you will end up with essentially having done the topic twice in the same amount of time. Therefore, you can revise by putting in a bit of time one week later, and this way you can avoid last minute revision and can go to sleep the night before with all the knowledge and confidence in your mind.