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January 06, 2020 / by Adam Mayhew

How to Properly Exam Prep

To properly prepare for a Math exam you need to do practice questions. Lots of them. You do not need to “go over your notes”. The “studying your notes” approach works well for science and in social studies, but it is major garbonzo beans for Math.

This is because Math is not a knowing thing, it is a doing thing. It doesn’t matter if you understand factoring, or if you look at your teachers example questions and they make sense. It matters if you can do it, and do it under pressure in the middle of a difficult question involving problem solving. The only way to find that out is to write practice exams.

The goal of the practice exams is simply to show you what you need to work on. If you find a logarithm you can’t do, no sweat, just go back to your notes and class examples and compare the new question to them until you figure it out. Or call me and book a class if you are truly stuck. Rinse and repeat for every question on the test you cannot do. You aren’t trying to get a high mark on the practice exam, you’re just using it as a means to show you what you need to work on.

The Key Booklets are a particularly good resource for this as their practice exams have fully written out solutions in the back, not just answers. But if you don’t have one, a quick google search can often find you some good practice exams.

These are some links to various practice exams and review worksheets one can find on the internet.

Math 30-1

Math 30-2

Math 20-1

Math 20-2

Math 10-C

Physics 30

Physics 20

  • Year end review Scroll to the bottom of the page. There’s a file called Year end review. That’s the one you want.