Transitioning to High school (middle school)

Moving up to high school can be one of the more stressful and overwhelming experiences for anyone growing up! The big difference between primary and high school is all of a sudden we get given tests, assignments and exams – often all around the same time! The best students are the ones who can cope with this change in workload, and we’re going to show you how to do that! That’s why Elevate’s team of experts is here to give you the most important tips for settling into high school.

Create a weekly plan

To deal with this increased workload, almost every student tries to make a study timetable at some point in his or her school life, and the vast majority throw it out within a few weeks! The big reason they don’t stick to their study timetable is that the first thing they put into their timetables is when they’re going to study! This would seem to make sense, but it’s one of the worst ways to study through high school. We all start the year with heaps of motivation, fully intending to do loads of study each week and putting aside all the things we love.

What most students don’t realize is that the things we love – our hobbies, favourite TV shows, seeing our friends, playing sports etc. – these things actually make us more productive! So put the things you love doing into your weekly plan first, and then fit blocks of study into the gaps. Of course, don’t go crazy and put 15 hours of XBOX into your timetable each night, but an appropriate amount of these things you love doing will actually make you work better!

Get homework done early!

One of the biggest mistakes students make when it comes to homework is that they leave it to the last minute. This becomes a huge problem when we have lots of different subjects all demanding loads of homework on the same day! A good way to get around this problem is to get your homework done early in the week, as soon as it’s given to you. By checking your weekly plan straight away, you can see which nights you have more things on and wont be able to get the homework done.

But the more important reason to get homework done early has nothing to do with school at all! Without doubt, all the best programs on TV come on later in the night – so if you get your homework done early in the night, you won’t have that stress hanging over you of getting it done! That way, you’ll be free to watch the show in peace! 

Revise: little but often

Probably the hardest thing about moving to high school is that as students, we’re not tested on the material we’ve learnt straight away. Often, tests and exams are held months after we’ve learnt the information in class, so it’s much harder to remember it all! While most students wait until the week before their exam to start going over what they learnt throughout the year, the best students are revising as they go to make the exam period much easier for themselves.

The reason we revise is that as soon as we learn something, unless we write it down straight away we lose about 25% of the information! That number doubles if we don’t look over the information within a day, and goes up again if we don’t revise the information that week. Revision isn’t a lot of work – in fact, if you go by the motto ‘little but often’, you’ll make it much easier for yourself! Simply put, as soon as you take a set of notes, just read over what you’ve written as soon as you’ve finished. Then, when you go to do a different subject the next day, simply read over what you wrote the day before, and then come back to it at the end of the week. By doing little bits of revision more often, you make it so much easier when it comes to exams!

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