by Lauren Loveless | staff writer
December: the month that spreads holiday cheer, but also welcomes the stress of final exams. Starting on December 19 and ending December 22, all students will take final exams. With that, teachers stress the importance of studying and push students to attend reviews to help prepare.
The most popular studying material is a review sheet, which most teachers give out.
“They should prepare if their instructor gives them a review sheet, definitely follow the review sheet. If they don’t, just make sure that they talk to the instructor, that they come in during tutoring hours and engage what the teacher’s going to be looking for on the final exam,” AP biology teacher, Oscar Velasquez said.
Teachers also suggest attending review sessions and forming study groups, which help expand students level of understanding of the material.
“The way you always succeed is getting into study groups, making sure that you’re covering different concepts because you could have different people with different strengths helping you to study,” Velasquez said.
Review assignments can be overwhelming to some, especially since students will likely get several, but there are ways to prevent stress.
“I teach them to not procrastinate, so break up so many questions per day and like write that in their planner so that they don’t feel overwhelmed,” Koehl said.
No matter the amount of studying, the statistics of test performance for classes taken willingly tend to be significantly higher. This suggests that students tend to do better in classes they actually want to take, which has more motivation than a subject they have less interest in.
“More, I think, tend to fail. Because for one, they can’t exempt because of their grades not going high enough or they procrastinate and aren’t prepared,” Pre-Calculus and Algebra II teacher Jennifer Koehl said.
College level courses and dual credit classes offer the unique motivation of potential college credit that can be a push factor in regards to students doing well on exams.
“Usually if we’re talking about percentage, I’d say about 94 to 95 percent pass and I have about 5 percent that fail. But then again, I teach students who are in my class because they want to. Being in a college level class, they’re in here because they want to be successful,” Velasquez said.
Although studying for electives or preferred subjects may be more appealing, there are many options available for classes a student may not like or understand as well. For example, there is always the option of tutoring and seeking help from fellow peers. There is also an increasing amount of online resources, such as Crash Course on Youtube or Quizlet.
“I know the math honor society provides tutoring in the library, I believe on Wednesday. Then just teachers offering tutoring before and after school,” Koehl said.
