Study methods
A study method that works for high school exams
Rereading your notes feels like studying, and by the next morning almost none of it is left. Here is a way of working that holds up, from the three-week calendar to the morning of the exam.
The most common trap
Why rereading your notes isn’t enough
You went over your notes three times and it felt like you knew everything. The next morning, in front of the exam paper, it all goes blurry. That gap has nothing to do with how smart you are.
Rereading makes a text feel familiar, and familiarity is not memory. Recognizing a formula sitting right in front of you takes far less effort than pulling it out of your head with a blank page ahead of you. The exam asks for the second thing, so an effective study method has to train exactly that.
Rereading sorts nothing out either: you keep going over what you already know and skim past whatever resists. Highlighters do the same thing — colouring a page keeps your hands busy without keeping your head busy.
Recognizing an answer and retrieving it from memory are two different things. The exam only ever asks for the second one.
Two simple principles
Test yourself first, space it out after
Two habits change almost everything, and every study method that works is built on them.
The first one is active recall. Instead of rereading, you close the notebook and try to produce the answer: out loud, on a sheet of paper, or by explaining it to someone. It feels harder, and sometimes you get stuck; that effort is exactly what makes the information stick.
In practice: after a page of theory, turn it face down and write what you remember. The gap between your version and the original is your real study list.
The second one is spaced repetition. Rather than four hours straight the night before, do four forty-five-minute sessions spread over three weeks, each time going back to whatever went badly. Forgetting a little between sessions is not a failure: it is what makes the next recall worth something.
The calendar
A three-week study plan
Exam prep only holds up if it is written down somewhere, with dates. Three weeks is enough for most end-of-term exams; for the Secondary 5 uniform exam, start six weeks ahead.
- 1
Before you start: take inventory
Pull out the course outline and your old exams. List the concepts being evaluated, then mark each one: I can explain it, I half know it, I don’t know it.
Twenty minutes, with the list in front of you — never from memory.
- 2
Week 1 — understand and trim down
Start with everything marked “I don’t know it.” The goal is not to memorize, it is to understand. Have someone walk you through whatever is blocking you, redo a worked example step by step, then turn each concept you have cleared up into one study card.
Three or four 45-minute sessions, with a real break between each one.
- 3
Week 2 — test yourself without your notes
Close everything. Cover the answer on each card and say it back out loud. Whatever you miss goes into tomorrow’s pile; whatever you get right comes back three days later.
Keep a “mistakes” sheet: it is the most useful document of the final week.
- 4
Week 3 — simulate the exam
Do at least one full exam under real conditions: timer running, only the formula sheet you are allowed, no interruptions. Mark it strictly, then go back over the questions you missed.
One practice exam on the weekend, 30 minutes of cards on the other evenings.
Study cards
What a real study card looks like
A study card is not the course copied out in smaller handwriting. It is a tool that forces you to answer.
One concept per card
One theorem, one grammar rule, one definition. If you have to turn the card over twice, split it in two.
A question on the front, the answer on the back
“How do you recognize a quadratic function?” rather than “Quadratic functions.”
Your words, not the textbook’s
If you cannot put it in your own words, the concept is not understood yet.
One worked example
A short exercise, solved step by step, with the usual trap noted in the margin.
The link to the rest of the chapter
“Use it when you are looking for…”, “don’t confuse it with…”: often exactly what is missing on exam day.
Two piles: “to review” and “solid”
A card moves to “solid” once you have got it right twice, on two different days.
Make your cards as you go: the card is there to help you study, it is not the studying.
Practice
Working through past exams
Nothing replaces a past exam: it teaches you the wording of the instructions, how long the expected answers are, and the pace to hold. Ask your teacher for previous years’ evaluations; for the ministry exams and the uniform exam, the Ministère publishes information documents that describe the format of the exam and the evaluation criteria.
Do it start to finish, timer running, without looking at the answer key. An exam done “halfway,” notes open, measures nothing.
Marking it counts as much as writing it. For each mistake, write the cause in three words: concept not known, instruction misread, calculation error, unit forgotten, ran out of time. After two practice exams a pattern usually shows up — and it is quicker to fix than the subject matter itself.
By subject
Adapting the method to math, French and science
The principle does not change: test yourself, space it out, mark it. What changes is the shape of the practice.
Mathematics
You do not memorize formulas, you memorize triggers: for each type of problem, write down the clue that tells you which method to use.
- Redo the exercises, don’t reread the solutions
- Write every step, even the obvious ones
- Check the units and whether the answer makes sense
French
Work on full sentences, never on isolated rules. For the writing task, prepare your reference points and your examples ahead of time.
- One proofreading pass per type of error
- A plan before you write, every single time
- Examples drawn from the works studied in class
Science, chemistry and physics
Separate what has to be understood from what has to be memorized: diagrams and set-ups get redrawn from memory, laws get tested on cards.
- Redraw the diagrams with no model in front of you
- Name the steps out loud
- Check the order of magnitude of the result
The home stretch
The night before and the morning of the exam
The night before, you are not making up for three weeks: you are consolidating. Thirty to sixty minutes is plenty — the “mistakes” sheet and the cards still in the “to review” pile. Then close the bag: a short night usually costs more marks than one extra hour of studying earns.
Get everything ready that same evening: calculator and batteries, ruler, the formula sheet you are allowed, student ID, water bottle. In the morning, eat something and arrive early; skip the hallway cramming.
In front of the paper: read the whole exam before writing anything, note how many marks each question is worth, start with what you know how to do and flag the questions to come back to. If a question blocks you for more than two minutes, move on.
Stress
When nerves get in the way
A bit of stress helps: it keeps you alert. The trouble starts when your mind goes blank at the first question. Put the pencil down, breathe out slowly four or five times, then write something true on the page: a formula, a definition, a word from the chapter. Movement restarts memory better than waiting does.
Ahead of time, the best protection is still the timed practice exam: the body learns the situation, and shrinking the unknown shrinks the nerves.
If the anxiety comes back for every evaluation, if it gets in the way of sleeping or even of starting, talk to an adult at the school. An intervention plan can set out accommodations — extra time, a separate room — and a student with ADHD or a learning disability is sometimes already entitled to them.
Judge a study session by what you managed to retrieve from memory, not by the time you spent sitting at the desk.
An exam coming up and a study method to put in place?
We match the student with a tutor who knows the Quebec curriculum — online, anywhere in Greater Montreal. The first meeting is there to take stock of the subject matter and set the review dates with the student.
Tell us the subject, the level and the exam date: that is enough to get started.