The Transformation Term: Why Term 2 is the MOST Important Term of the QCE

Are you in Year 12 and worrying about externals looming in the distance? Well, there is no better time to get on top of your studying skills than Term 2 of Year 12 — the transformation term.

If you weren’t already aware, Term 2 is the most important term of your senior experience! 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 QCE Externals

How do you turn your marks around?

Why is Term 2 important?

With most of your IA marks coming from assignments in both Term 2 and 3, 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 Unit 3 is taught, with Unit 4 being introduced also. With all this content to worry about learning, you also have the IA2 assessments, and towards the end of the term, the IA3 assessments as well!

As such, Term 2 is the most important time to evaluate your progress and take the opportunity to improve your marks and have a sizeable impact on your ATAR.

Below are a few reasons as to why Term 2 of Year 12 is so important:

Reason #1: Building Up Your Results

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 QCE students, 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.

For example, you may have scored 50% in your Term 1 assessment and overall you are aiming for an A (around 90%). This means there’s a 40% gap that needs to be plugged — which may seem like a lot, if you aren’t using Term 2 improve your marks.

So, how do we make this more achievable? For your Term 2 assessment, you’re going to want to aim for 70%.

Once you’ve achieved 70% in your Term 2 assessment, that 90% for your externals won’t feel so far away because you’ve built up that growth through a systematic approach.

Essentially, you’ll be working towards improving your marks by 20% step by step, rather than turning your marks around by 40% all in one go!

You will be learning new content up until your mock exams, and 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!

Watch this video to work out how to deal with disappointing first Year 12 results (hint: it’s not over!!)

Reason #2: Forming 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 QCE exams.

Term 2 is the perfect opportunity to evaluate your goals and take the time to start building on study habits ahead of your Externals. 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. 

A super important study habit is taking effective study notes!

Reason #3: Preparing for External Exams

To ensure that you’re well-prepared for your externals, It’s important to identify areas of improvement from your IA1 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 from Unit 3, while also ensuring that you understand the new content you’re learning throughout Term 2 and Unit 4!

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 QCE results. With a handy reflection, a solid plan, and some help to support you through your QCE 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 turnaround 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 of Year 12 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 Externals.

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. Year 12 content is 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!

Want to know which high schools in Brisbane are best to attend? Find out with our Ultimate Brisbane ATAR School Ranking List!

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