600 point student open to questions!

Haha cheers yeah it was a great feeling i have to say.

Well what I did is I made out a list of everything I needed to know for every subject. E.g. I had an A4 sheet with all the chapters for chemistry, biology etc. written on them and by lookin at them I instinctively knew what I needed to go over and what I already knew fairly well.
When I decided what needed to be studied I’d write it in my study diary for that day and I’d cross everything off as I did it. Anything I didn’t get done, I’d mark it in for the next day.

The simple answer to your next question is, never!
I was still feelin anxious about just about every subject until the night before the exam. So anxious that I went through the entire course for each subject in the day/ 2 days before the exam.
On the last day I had Music and Ag science and the night before I was up until about 4 cause I still didn’t think I knew the material well enough!
And I think that’s the best way to be! You shouldn’t feel confident until the mornin of the exam (when you really need to feel confident, even if it means trickin yourself into thinkin so!) cause that’ll make sure you do as much preperation as you possibly can right up to the last minute! 😀

haha, thanks blondie 😛

Absolutely!!
You still have 4 months! That’s a huuuge amount of time!
If you get organised now you can still do very well.

I suppose the last 2 or 3 weeks was when I was doin the craziest amount of study. Like, before then, I never went for the whole gettin up at 6 every mornin to study and then stayin up til 2 am. But from about the 20th May I certainly wasn’t sleepin the recommended amount yano!

But seriously if you can get yourself motivated for these last few months then go for it!

Well the first thing I can tell you is that feeling unprepared now is a good thing, it’s gonna be the catalyst to make sure you work as much as you can! But the morning of each exam you gotta walk in to that exam hall like a boss! B)

Make yourself believe that you’re sorted (without going to the extreme of being cocky cause that can be a bad thing too!) cause exams are all about psychology! Keep a cool head and all that.

I got 540 in my mocks and I took them somewhat seriously. The mocks aren’t about doin well, they’re about familiarising yourself with the whole process of the exam. Like, I wouldn’t have really studied especially for the mocks the week before, I just kept on studyin my normal routine cause I had my eyes on June!
I would say breeze through some general revision alright, but don’t go treatin your mocks like the results are of paramount importance, cause they’re not.
And its much better to do average in the mocks than to do really well cause this is gonna scare ya a little bit and you’ll do much more work for when the time comes in June!

Right well first of all it’s really important to make sure your project is organised and coherent. Have clearly defined sections and group facts figures that are related to each other in the same place yano.
Like, I didn’t particularly like ag science – I had nothing to do with agriculture all my life so alot of seemed really random! and what made it worse was that our ag science teacher was dubious at best!
But I got my hands on some really good notes and suddenly I got to know so much more info on the course, and because of that, although I didn’t get much enjoyment out of it, I started doin really well in it! 😀 Having a ton of info is the way to do well in the interview part. You could really be asked anything since the ag science course is so broad, so the only way to combat that is to cram as many course-based facts into your head as possible – I know it doesn’t sound very exact but that was the only approach I could think of when faced with such a broad course yano!

Also here’s the advice I gave to a similar question above and I think it’s very relevant.

It’s funny cause I had the very same problem last year. Our teacher was more of a farmer than a teacher and he would dictate notes for us to take down without really havin definite course-focused material. And you can only work with the material you’re given so the key is to supplement what your teacher gives you with extra material that is more exam focused.

One strategy is to go through all the exam papers and copy down the answers from the markin schemes on examinations.ie and learn them and understand them.

Another, more reliable way is to get your hands on some really good notes! I got all my cousin’s notes who went to a certain grind school the year before (it was a stack about 4 inches high!) and just ploughed through them. There was a massive amount of facts and figures in each chapter which was very daunting but way to get an idea of what exact parts of the notes to focus on is to get really familiar with the exam papers. Get used to the types of questions that are asked and absorb anything from the notes that you think will be relevant based on your assessment of the question types. The common types of ones are like “compare the body types of cattle in a dairy enterprise and beef enterprise.” or “Discuss the management of animals in a pig enterprise from farrowing to slaughter”. You can be asked the latter question regarding any type of farm enterprise sheep, cattle, pigs, poultry.

Make sure ya know the phylums and plant families like the back of your hand as they’re definites!

Know all your barley and potato facts, sowing, favourable climate, when to harvest, all that stuff.

Do whatever you can to get your hands on extra notes, the farmers journal, the independant, see if you know anyone who may have gone to a weekend course or grinds/grind school.

The problem with ag science is that although it’s not very complex stuff, the course is really broad. The best way to prepare for that is maximising your knowledge of farm related info.

Hope this helps!

Ok so it looks like you have 3 options. The first is to do the technology thing for the practical as well as the violin, I’ve heard it’s incredibly easy!
The second is to do 6 pieces on the violin, if you decide to do this I think it’s a very good idea to try different genres and different time signatures. I did 4 trad pieces on the accordion- all different time sinatures- and then for the drums I did two trad pieces, a jig and a reel, and then I played a kind of metal song by system of a down which I think was 6/8 or 12/8 and it had lots of syncopation and not so common rhythms, and I also played that jazz piece take five which was in 5/4. I think being able to play in these different time signatures is quite impressive and as long as you don’t make any major mistakes you’re very likely to get at least 48/49 %.
The third option is to do 4 solo pieces and 4 with a group i.e. with one or two other people. Someone did that in my school last year and as part of the group performance he played a tune for a bodhran player, he had a guitar player accompany him play playing a tune and then played 2 tunes with another musician – like a duet.
I think it just comes down to which option appeals to you most yano!

Not at all! I went up exactly 60 points from my mocks to my leavin cert, anything over 450 in the mocks is very encouraging for getting really high points in the real thing!

Well for chemistry I think the biggest hurdle in each chapter is understanding the material. There were lots of days in chemistry when I didn’t immediately understand what we were learning and it was really frustrating. But when I got home I wouldn’t rest until I understood it. I’d look at the page for an hour if I had to and then if I needed to I’d go on the internet, youtube, google, and type in the topic, there are some great videos and articles all over the internet which explain concepts so well and I found them a big help! One is chemguide.co.uk. I remember I didn’t fully understand part of the ph chapter until I looked at this website.

Once you understand the material I’m afraid the only advice I have is repitition! Go through every last one of the chapters and do all the questions in the exam papers and when you’re done, do them all again! For diagrams draw them out again and again, for experiments write them out again and again! The day before my chemistry exam I went through every single chapter, but it was easy study because I was able to breeze through each page in the knowledge that I had seen each page maybe 100 times and had what I needed engrained into my head!

Hope this is of help to you!

I gave the best advice I could just a few comments up the page so I’m gonna copy and paste that and hopefully that should be of help to you.

Right well what I think you should do is get A4 sheets, one for every subject, and on each sheet write down each of the chapters/sections of the subject. And stick these sheets up on your bedroom wall or door so you’re continuously reminded of what’s to be done.
I did this and the reason I thought it was so helpful was because as you look at these sheets, you see everything you need to know for each subject. No work gets overlooked!

Secondly, get a study diary so that you can document all the work you have done and intend to do.

Every day when deciding what to study look at these sheets and take a different chapter/section every day/2 days. Be honest with yourself, after going through a section go to the exam papers and if you can answer the exam questions then you did a good job. Once you’ve covered a chapter/section mark it with a highlighter, do that for each one and then go to the second round of study where you do them all again, with the same process of looking at the papers, and then mark them all again with a different colour (the same colour for each round of study). It’s through this repetition that the facts you need to know get stuck in your head and not fall through it like a sive!

If you want to get organised this is the way to go!
I followed this process and it worked wonders for me!

Yeah if you’re giving exactly what’s required by the marking scheme then you’ve no option but to get full marks!

But like, make sure that you understand what you’re writing down, it’s dangerous to just transcribe whatever exact words you see on examinations.ie into your answer, make sure you know the full answer in your head like! Sometimes the marking schemes only indicate a certain word that’s needed in the answer to get the marks… it’s still required that you write out a sentence or definition and explain what your answer. Maybe the reason your teacher doesn’t give you full marks is that you don’t write out a full sentence or definition?

However, if you know you’re stuff and explain your answer and then just check the marking scheme to make sure you’re giving what’s required, then you deserve full marks for sure!

Good luck!

Hey thanks! yup definitely the anion tests MUST be known!
At least one of them always comes up every year, if not in their own question they can come up as part of a larger question! It’s really one of those key things to study yano!

Good Luck!

Oh feck yeah sorry didn’t read your question carefully enough :S

Yeah you do need to know the equations, I know they’re a pain but they’re definitely necessary!

best of luck!

Right well what I think you should do is get 7 A4 sheets, one for every subject, and on each sheet write down each of the chapters/sections of the subject. And stick these sheets up on your bedroom wall or door so you’re continuously reminded of what’s to be done.
I did this and the reason I thought it was so helpful was because as you look at these sheets, you see everything you need to know for each subject. No work gets overlooked!
Secondly, get a study diary so that you can document all the work you have done and intend to do.

Every day when deciding what to study look at these sheets and take a different chapter/section every day/2 days. Be honest with yourself, after going through a section go to the exam papers and if you can answer the exam questions then you did a good job. Once you’ve covered a chapter/section mark it with a highlighter, do that for each and then go to the second round of study where you do them all again, with the same process of looking at the papers, and then mark them all again with a different colour (the same colour for each round of study)

That’s the best advice I can give cause that’s the approach I took. In 6th year I would generally try and study about 4-5 subjects a night, but that number could easily be less or more if the chapters/topics I was studying happened to be particularly short or long ones, it’s really something you have to judge yourself.
One thing I regretted not having done in 5th year is studying topics more thoroughly. I was always trying to get loads of work done every night to the point that I often went through stuff too quickly without a full grasp of it. So what I would advise is when ever you study something, study it slowly and thoroughly the first time. Spend an hour on a topic if you need to cause the fact is you still have forever before your LC. Then when you’re goin back revisin stuff in 6th year it’ll come back to you really quick and easy!

Of course! When you think about it you still have like 6 or 7 weeks left and if you commit to some serious study you can get a huuuge amount of work done and raise your points considerably!
Feel free to look at some of my earlier posts about study advice, especially my first reply post about french which could help you bump up that french grade!

Best of luck.

Right well I think that one of the most essential things you need to well in Chemistry is a solid understanding of the material. Do whatever you can to attain this, whether that means spending an hour reading something or drawing something out again and again, or alternatively searching online for videos or diagrams that help to make the concept that bit clearer.
Once you have this the next step is obviously making it all stick in you head! So to do that I think you should just do the exact same thing you’ve been doin with Biology :S As unappealing as that may sound..
Write out your experiments constantly! Make sure you know your chemistry definitions to the letter! i.e. exactly how they are in the book or exactly how your teacher tells you to know them. One thing our teacher always told us is that you won’t bluff a definition in chemistry and he was absolutely right, even if you have jist of it in your head and you think you can put it into your own words don’t do it! Learn it exactly The reason for this is that in the marking schemes there are certain words that NEED to be included or you won’t get the marks.

For Biology it sounds like you’re in the perfect position! If you’re at the point where you’re absolutely sick to the teeth of revising the same stuff over and over again, that obviously indicates that you know it inside out! No matter how tedious it may be, keep revising! because the more engrained the material is in your head, the less likely you are to forget something or get nervous or mix something up. However one thing I could advise to make it a bit more interesting is this. Take a certain chapter, and before you even look at a single page in that chapter see how much of the info you can write on a page working completely from memory. Now I don’t mean writing out all the explanatory text, I mean writing out every important definition in that chapter, drawing every diagram, explaining every important concept. Because at the end of the day if you can do that, you couldn’t possibly be better prepared!

Yeah English isn’t as straightforward cause it involves personal opinions in almost every part. Well the one definite is that you should know your poems, play and comparative really well i.e. know lots of quotes – chiefly the really important ones that reveal stuff about characters, poets’ emotions and stuff. And practise as often as possible by doing questions in the allocated time that you have in the exam. No point spendin 2 hours doin a question when ya only have 40 minutes on the day yano! And get them corrected! The more times you get a C for a certain type of question, the more chance you have of gettin a B and then an A the next time!.. as long as you take the advice and criticism from teachers of course
For the comprehensions and unseen poem, just practise loads of them. I know that might not sound very specific but the way to do well in them is by developing the right techniques, look at marking schemes to get an idea of what examiners want and give them exactly what they want! Then they have no choice but to give you full marks!

Best of luck.

Hey sorry for the late reply, well I didn’t do Economics myself so I can’t give you any specific advice but I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess that there’s lots of learning involved..? You still have lots of time to learn so I’m gonna just give you an approach that I would recommend.
So, what I’d advise that you get a sheet or two of paper and on it write down everything you need to know, the headings like, so that when you look at these sheets you see exactly what you need to study. Then get a diary and each day take something from one of those sheets and write it in the diary and commit to studying it! You’ve more than a month left so try your best to get really stuck in and stick to a routine!
When it comes to the actual learning the key word is repetition! Drill things into your head whatever way you can, saying it with the book closed a million times writing it out a million times, whatever you need to to give yourself the feeling “I now know this.” Then once you’ve done that do every question you can find on the papers on that particular topic. If all you need is a pass then you could probably get away with leaving some stuff out, for example, certain topics that came up last year, however don’t go overboard! :L
The thing is you should try and cover every topic at least twice to give yourself a realistic chance of remembering it on the day!
Good luck!

Hey sorry for the late reply, well I didn’t do Economics myself so I can’t give you any specific advice but I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess that there’s lots of learning involved..? You still have lots of time to learn so I’m gonna just give you an approach that I would recommend.
So, what I’d advise that you get a sheet or two of paper and on it write down everything you need to know, the headings like, so that when you look at these sheets you see exactly what you need to study. Then get a diary and each day take something from one of those sheets and write it in the diary and commit to studying it! You’ve more than a month left so try your best to get really stuck in and stick to a routine!
When it comes to the actual learning the key word is repetition! Drill things into your head whatever way you can, saying it with the book closed a million times writing it out a million times, whatever you need to to give yourself the feeling “I now know this.” Then once you’ve done that do every question you can find on the papers on that particular topic. If all you need is a pass then you could probably get away with leaving some stuff out, for example, certain topics that came up last year, however don’t go overboard! :L
The thing is you should try and cover every topic at least twice to give yourself a realistic chance of remembering it on the day!
Good luck!

Hey so if maths isn’t in your top 6 I’m 99.9 % sure you don’t get the 25 extra points so that would immediately indicate that you should consider dropping down. It would certainly give you much much more time for other subjects which of course would be a great thing!
Also remember that if you’re gonna be 550 plus in your LC points, each 5 of that extra 25 only converts to 1, so the extra points come to a tally of 5 and not 25.
Good luck with it anyway!

Well first of all fair play for gettin motivated.

I went to the Gaeltacht myself so I was on a good footing already goin into 5th year but if I was teaching it, this is definitely what I’d advise.
Well one quick fix for you to seriously improve your grammar is to get a book called Gramadach na Gaeilge by Edel Ní Bhriain. If you were to get this book and go through it slowly and thoroughly and do all the exercises 4 or 5 times over, you could get yourself up to a really high standard. It has pretty much all the grammar you need to know.
However, that book isn’t completely necessary. Your first step is to seperate and write down on a piece of paper every different grammar topic you wanna know, e.g. séimhiú, urú, prepositions and the rules that follow them, etc.
And get your hands on a page from anywhere, some book that does grammar, that gives you the rules for each, take each topic one at a time. Then just learn the rules really thoroughly, over and over again if you have to. Then do as much practise as you can, writing out sample sentences which require you to use the rules you’ve learned again and again. For example, let’s say you were learnin all the prepositions that require an urú after them, you would write out sentence after sentence , ‘tá duilleoga faoin gcrann’ ‘tá scian ar an mbord’. I’d say most books would have sample exercises anyway,
Hopefully this will help you make out a plan for comin to terms with it all! 🙂

Well it’s good you understand the importance of stickin to the question, lots of people don’t and it’s often their downfall.
Yeah that’s not a bad idea, except maybe write them at the top of the page in pencil so you can rub them out cause they might confuse the examiner.
Why, out of interest, do you highlight the words?
If it’s to make sure the examiner can see it, you don’t have to worry. It’s absolutely drilled into the examiners that they have to look out for the words in the question, put a little mark beside it and count how many times you’ve used those words when marking your answer, so I’d say you’re safe enough in that respect.

I apologise, I didn’t see this till now. Hopefully you’ll see this before the exam!

I’m afraid I don’t have any samples at this stage. However, I can tell you two things that, if you include them in your essay, you should definitely score higher than 6 out of 10!
The first is to use plenty of musical examples. As in, when you make a point give an example of that point. For example, if you were to write about ornamentation in sean nos singing, you would go to the rough work stave in the answer book (while indicating to the examiner that your example was in that part of the answer book) and write out the notes as they normally are/without ornamentation, and then the notes with the ornamentation, if you know what I mean. I can’t stress enough the importance of these examples.

The second piece of advice, probably the most important piece is that you have to make sure that each sentence you write has a significant piece of information in it.
i.e.
Sean nos singing is a highly ornamented singing form, is traditionally sung in Irish and hails from the gaeltacht areas of Ireland.
and not-
Sean nos singing comes from Ireland and has been around for many years.
The difference there is that anyone at all could write the second sentence, but you have to actually know your stuff to write the first sentence.
The examiners are extremely wary of candidates who chance their arm writing very vague general sentences in an attempt to score easy marks. To score 8 out of 10 upwards you have to absolutely jam-pack your essay with factual, significant information, as well as giving lots of relevant examples.

It’s a shame you only have a day to try and implement this info before your exam, still though, there’s alot can be done in 5 or 6 hours of study – try your best!

Good luck!!

Sure. Yeah for french what you should do is look at the very first question I answered, that has pretty much my best advice. I didn’t do Geography I’m afraid so I don’t think I can really advise on that.

Right well what I think you should do is get 7 A4 sheets, one for every subject, and on each sheet write down each of the chapters/sections of the subject. And stick these sheets up on your bedroom wall or door so you’re continuously reminded of what’s to be done.
I did this and the reason I thought it was so helpful was because as you look at these sheets, you see everything you need to know for each subject. No work gets overlooked!
Secondly, get a study diary so that you can document all the work you have done and intend to do.

Every day when deciding what to study look at these sheets and take a different chapter/section every day/2 days. Be honest with yourself, after going through a section go to the exam papers and if you can answer the exam questions then you did a good job. Once you’ve covered a chapter/section mark it with a highlighter, do that for each and then go to the second round of study where you do them all again, with the same process of looking at the papers, and then mark them all again with a different colour (the same colour for each round of study)

If you want to get organised this is the way to go!

Good luck!

Hey well to be honest I didn’t like the idea of studying during the summer so I can’t say I did. It’s a great idea though, and what you’ve planned with regards to revising and doing exam questions sounds great. What you could also try is to maybe get a headstart with some 6th year stuff, maybe get reading some poems you haven’t done yet or re-reading your single text, making out little summaries and stuff, lots of possibilities like.
Even moreso what I would advise is to target any particular weaknesses you might have. Let’s say you’re not very fluent speaking french, get practising it. Just talk to yourself in french, describing stuff, thinking out loud.. after a while you start to see a great improvement.

Great stuff it works a treat!