Top 10 A Level Maths Exam Techniques
Top 10 A Level Maths Exam Techniques – Introduction
n this blog article we are going to talk about some maths exam tips and maths exam techniques for A Level Maths.
Tip Number 1
Attempt everything, every single part of that maths exam paper needs to have something that has been answered on it. Sometimes when part b or part c relies on an answer to part a it might make you think you can’t do it. Guess part a write down what your guess is and then just continue with the question using that number. You should gather most of the marks. Some mark schemes will even give you full marks if you’ve used an incorrect thing that’s earlier on.
Leaving it blank, you guarantee yourself getting zero.
Tip Number 2
Bail and then return. If you’re spending like five ten minutes on a one mark question you need to bail on that question, put a star next to it and if you have time at the end of it you can come back.
Lots of the time people run out of time in the maths exam and that’s not a very good strategy. Because you’re not going to even access marks right at the end.
Tip Number 3
If you don’t run out of time and you actually have some spare time, what you should do is not to just glance at your work and see if it looks reasonable, instead pick out a couple of questions where you think the calculations could have gone wrong andredo those questions.
Humans are much better at spotting the difference between two things rather than just trying to look at one and find out if there are any mistakes. So redo any questions if you have time.
Maths Exam Tips 4 - 6
Tip Number 4
Flick through the maths exam at the beginning and see what kind of things you will be up against. If there’s something that looks a bit weird or unfamiliar it gives your brain some time to process what you might be able to do for that question.
Tip Number 5
Simplify and extract. Sometimes a question is going to look quite dense. What you need to try and figure out is what’s even going on there. Underlining key facts and trying to translate it from something that looks confusing into something that you understand.
Remember everything that’s in that maths exam paper is something that you have studied. How can you link that question to something that you know?
When we say extract, for mechanics this is particularly important when you have a big body of text in the question.
Often you just need some key values that come from there. Write those out separately so that you don’t have to keep looking at that big body of text again.
Tip Number 6
Recognise and strategise. Recognise what it is that actually needs to be done to answer that question and then strategise to say what are the steps you’re going to take. This is particularly applicable if a question is six seven or eight marks or even bigger than that.
You just want to have a list of the things to do. This is an excellent tip – at the end make sure you reread the question that you’ve definitely answered it in the way that it wanted. To the right number of decimal places, have you actually got the coordinate, if that’s what they’re looking for?
Maths Exam Tips 7 - 10
Tip Number 7
The formula book has got some really good things in there so be familiar with it and make sure you know where to find things.
Tip Number 8
If there are some formulae that you just can’t get into your head that are not in the formula book look at them just before you’re going in the exam. As soon as you open that paper, write down all of those things that you’ve just memorised before you’ve gone in and then you can forget about them.
You’ve got them there on the piece of paper ready to use if you need them.
Tip Number 9
Have two calculators such as a graphics calculator and a normal scientific calculator. You might find it easier to have two screens.
Make sure you know how to switch between the different modes such as degrees and radians.
The Classwiz calculator: if there is a simultaneous equation or a polynomial you must make sure that you know how to do that on the calculator. It is a big big time saver. Also questions like integration or series or matrices that are in further maths your calculator can do these things.
It’s great to check the answers particularly things with integration and limits you can check if you’ve got the right answer. Obviously you do need to show while you’re working for any integration.
Tip Number 10
This is probably the most important one. After you’ve closed that maths exam you just need to move on and forget about it. There’s always going to be another paper or it’ll be the end of your maths exam season and you can finally have a break.
These are out 10 tips of how you should be approaching your A Level maths exams.
We are wishing you the best of luck for your exams as they come up and hope that they go really well for you. If you’re finding yourself getting stuck on anything in maths then we have our half term revision courses to cover topics you don’t understand.