Writing a summary for HSC PDHPE as you progress through the course is vital to your success at the end. So often students leave writing their summaries until the end of a unit, or the 2 weeks leading up to exams. The result is students who are stressed and who end up wasting time writing summaries just before exams rather than more effective study strategies such as answering past exam questions, and other forms of self-testing.
Writing summaries as you go helps to cement your learning. It is important to revisit what you learnt soon after you learnt it, to give it structure and connect it to other information you already learnt. Writing your summaries helps you to provide that structure and establish the connections. Writing your summaries also refreshes the information in your mind, which helps you to shift the content from short-term to long-term memory via spaced repetition.
Writing summaries as you go is also important for later memory refreshing activities. It is much faster to find information in summary format that you wrote than to search for it online or in a textbook. For example, when you want to quickly find what the waste product of the alactacid energy system is you have a short summarised piece of information in front of you rather than a long-winded explanation of why it is the waste product and other information you are not looking for.
Writing summaries as you go, ensures that your study doesn’t build up in your absence. Without up-to-date summaries, studying for exams becomes a larger chore than it should be. However, those who write their summaries as they go have more time to focus on practising responding to tests and exam questions. They develop better understandings of marking criteria and are enabled to go into the exam more confident in their ability to answer the question, rather than simply providing some relevant information.
So, if your summaries are falling behind or you haven’t started them yet, please get onto this immediately. DO NOT wait till later. Get yourself organised and your year will become much easier. If your summaries are up-to-date, then use them. Read over them frequently (maybe have them on your wall as a mind-map) and test yourself on the content within them as often as you can (maybe use some flashcards). I highly recommend that you read your summary for a dot point and then complete a practice question on that dot point straight afterwards. It will help you to retain your learning and hopefully be well prepared come exam time.
