The Transformation Term: Why Term 2 is the MOST Important Term for Years 7-10

If you weren’t already aware, Term 2 is the most important term of the year! Before you begin to panic, we’re here to give you all the tips and tricks to help optimise your Term 2 experience and maximise your results.

Let’s begin!

Why is Term 2 important?

Reason #1: Building Up Your Results

Reason #2: Forming Study Habits

Reason #3: Preparing for End-of-Year Exams

How do you turn your marks around?

Why is Term 2 important?

With half-yearlies around the corner, the start of Term 2 marks the time to really get your game on. 

Term 2 is a super content-heavy period, in which a lot of content is revised and introduced.

As such, Term 2 is the most important time to evaluate your progress and take the opportunity to improve your marks.

Below are a few mistakes you’ll want to avoid in Term 2 in Years 7-10.

Mistake #1: Giving Up

A common issue that students encounter right around when Term 2 begins is a huge drop in motivation. Burnout is a very common issue for students in Years 7-10, particularly when you haven’t been receiving the marks that you’ve wanted!

That’s why using Term 2 for mark transformation is so critical for improving your marks, and increasing your overall grade.

You will be learning new content up until your half-yearlies, so staying consistent with your studying is important for acing your end of year exams. There is substantial room to transform your marks, and this can only be achieved by increasing your motivation and maintaining consistency!

Coming off the back of a bad mark, you may not feel motivated to keep up the work… Learn why a disappointing first assessment result isn’t the end!

Mistake #2: Not Establishing Solid Study Habits

If you are aiming to achieve in the top percentile, raising your results requires consistent step-by-step improvements that will help you build a strong foundation in time for your yearly exams. 

Term 2 is the perfect opportunity to evaluate your goals and take the time to start building on study habits ahead of end-of-year assessments. With a habit taking 66 days on average to become automatic, that roughly translates to one term of habit-building commitment to improve your studying behaviour. 

Mistake #3: Neglecting Term 2 as a Chance to Adequately Prepare for Your Assessments

To ensure that you’re well-prepared for your externals, It’s important to identify areas of improvement from past assessments. You need to be working on addressing these gaps of knowledge during Term 2 to prevent you from making the same mistakes during end of year exams, to avoid a crazy cram-session! 

As you will be learning content up until your mock exams, catching up on content from previous terms will only make studying for the Externals much more stressful and drag your marks down. 

In order to not find yourself cramming at the last minute right before your exams, time management is essential.

Mapping out how you’ll use your time will give you the opportunity to fix up any knowledge gaps, while also ensuring that you understand the new content you’re learning throughout Term 2!

How do you transform your marks in a single term?

While Term 2 may seem overwhelming, the most important thing to note is that hard work and strategic planning will be your greatest assets to maximising your results. With a handy reflection, a solid plan, and some help to support you through your high school journey, you’re well on your way to making the most of your Term 2. 

Tip #1: Conduct a reflection

To conduct a helpful reflection, you’re going to need to look at your content and your study habits. To reflect on your content, you will need to take a look at your Term 4 and Term 1 assessments and search for any mistakes you made to identify key areas of improvement.

Make a list of the topics that you’re weaker at so you can go back and do some proper revision for them.

Another handy tip for reflecting on your content is to pull out your syllabus and apply the traffic light system. To do this, you’re going to look at your syllabus points and highlight them green, orange, and yellow according to your confidence levels:

Obviously, the syllabus points that you highlight orange and red indicate that these are challenging areas that you need to go back to and work on throughout the term. The ultimate purpose of your reflection is to proactively identify areas that you need to change to avoid making the same mistakes. 

The second part of your reflection process involves taking a look at your studying habits to see what is and what’s not working. To help you with this, use the KSS (Keep, Start, Stop) protocol to think about what strategies helped you, what strategies dragged you down, and what smarter studies you can adopt for the future. 

Tip #2: Build your Term 2 Transformation plan

The overarching aim of your plan is to fill in your previous gaps of knowledge while also learning new content. A common mistake that students make is to forget about fixing the gaps from Term 1 because they’re too focused on learning the new content and worrying about upcoming assessments.

Instead, the best way to study is to be proactive rather than reactive, which means that you should be paying close attention to your assessment schedule and work backwards. 

Whether it be through an Excel spreadsheet, a planner, or Google Calendar, make a timeline where you can allocate time to revise the topics that you need to plug gaps in knowledge for, as well as time to revise new content. A plan will not only help you to prepare for upcoming assignments and schedule your time accordingly, but it will also let you map out key milestones and goals that you need to hit.

Be realistic; don’t overwork yourself and give yourself several weeks of revision to complete in one week. You need to balance your workload, as well as the rest of your non-academic life!

Here’s an example of how you might start building out your plan:

Tip #3: Get help

The final step to helping your Term 2 be the ultimate turnaround is to consider getting help. Asking for help early is a key step that helps provide support for learning new content, working on areas of improvement, and building study habits in time for your final exams. 

Don’t wait until it’s too late!

In order for you to turn your marks around in Term 2, these are all the things you’ll want to accomplish:

You don’t have to do this alone. Learning new content can be hard, and having someone to help you fast-track your learning can be a vital step in improving your marks and increasing your motivation.

If you’re looking for tutoring support, we’ve got a range of options, including one-on-one, online and face-to-face sessions, to suit your learning needs! Our tutors can help to ensure you understand all the new content you’re learning while helping you plug and knowledge gaps.

Don’t wait until Term 3 comes around to start improving your marks — it’s time to start now!

Looking for some extra help with your Years 7-10 studies?

We pride ourselves on our inspirational coaches and mentors!

We offer tutoring and mentoring for Years K-12 in a variety of subjects, with personalised lessons in Essendon, one-on-one mentoring in Doncaster, or local tutoring in Footscray, in your home, or online.

To find out more and get started with an inspirational tutor and mentor get in touch today!

Give us a ring on 1300 267 888, email us at [email protected] or check us out on TikTok!