5 Tips to dominate your first HSC assessments!

Congratulations you’ve reached the big leagues and sh*t just got real. Way real.

Your first HSC assessments are just around the corner so we thought we’d give you some pointers. We’ve already gone through how important these first few assessments are so you know how vital it is to hit the ground running.

Here are our top 5 tips for early assessment domination:

1. Teachers know all

Remember that these early assessments are all written and marked by your school. Your teacher either wrote the assessment, has seen the assessment or is marking the assessment. Probably all three!

Most students forget this and miss out on a huge home court advantage.  We aren’t saying be a massive teacher's pet, but it’s definitely worth asking your teacher some questions:

• So what’s in the assessment? (why not go for gold straight up!)
• Do you have examples of good responses from previous years?
• Can you give us the marking criteria and talk us through it?
• Are there any good past paper or textbook questions we could look at for some practice?
• Are you marking our classes papers?

You get the point. Your teachers already know everything and actually want to help out (most of the time). So make sure you get up in their grill and ask them.

2. Content is king

If you’ve read any of our blog posts you’d know that we think content and application are equally important when it comes to HSC study. Not this time. This time, content is king!

These assessments are really early in the year, which means you haven’t actually gone over much content yet. It’s still fresh and this means teachers really want to test your understanding of new concepts. For this reason, early assessments tend to be more content focused and the students that typically do better are the ones that know their content.

Think of it like a race. Those that can learn content faster are going to get better marks.

That’s why we find that students who start watching Atomi early in the year get better marks even at this early stage. Getting all your content presented in short simplistic videos means you are being faster AND more efficient with your time. This time advantage gives you a massive head start in your HSC year.

3. Application is different

Because early HSC assessments are internally created and marked, there is a lot more scope for your school to move away from the traditional ‘HSC format’ of assessment.

Obviously application is always going to be important BUT instead of only doing HSC specific past papers try and get your hands on your school's own past assessments from previous years.

Most schools do the same assessment at the same time each year. So ask your teachers OR someone in the year above to have a look at their assessment. Chances are the one you have to do will be surprisingly similar.

There’s a cheeky hint that might save you some time.

4. Marking criteria is your secret weapon

If you read our post on the importance of early assessments you’ll remember us saying that your early assessments are likely to be creative tasks e.g. a speech or a take-home project.

The beauty about this is that most of your assessment tasks come with a marking criteria attached. It’s that part at the back that no one ever reads. Such a rookie error!

This marking criteria is your bible. It literally tells you how to get full marks. You should go through your assessment and make sure you can tick off every single element of the Band 6 marking criteria.

Your teachers will actually have this marking guide next to them as they read your work, so give them a reason to check every box.

5. Notes are useful

As you know, we prefer past papers over notes closer to the end of the year. But at this early stage notes can actually be very helpful in getting you great marks.

It ties in with our point about the importance of content - the faster you get across all the content, the bigger your advantage over your class. That’s why a really good set of notes that are succinct, clear and easy to understand is essential.

Interestingly, the majority of students that use Atomi use the videos to model their notes off. Instead of flicking through 1000s of textbook pages, you can watch a quick 6 min video on each topic that pretty much gives you summaries you can use as your notes!

It’s not something we anticipated students doing but they say it’s faster and easier to make notes off our videos than anything else.

So go nuts, we want to help anyway we can!