Have you ever been faced with a Maths exam full of questions and you thought: "Where do I even begin?"
Here is a technique that may work for you... When faced with any question, just follow these 5 Steps to Success:
1. Read the Question
When a teacher tells you to do this, they mean understand what the question is asking for.
For example:
Question
A train travels from London to Bristol. It leaves London at 14:25 and arrives at Bristol at 15:50.
Work out the number of minutes this train takes to travel from London to Bristol.
You'd be surprised to find that many students will write 1:25 or 1 hour 25 minutes instead of the real answer, 85 minutes, because they failed to realise the answer was required in minutes.
Another classic case where pupils fail to read the question properly:
Question
Use the information that
134 x 85 = 11390
to find the value of 1.34 x 85.
Many pupils will then try to use long multiplication or other such methods to work out 1.34 x 85 instead of using the information given to them.
Solution
134 ÷ 100 = 1.34
So the value of 1.34 x 85 will be 11390 ÷ 100 = 113.90, which we write as 113.9
2. What do I know?
Don’t expect to have an answer straight away. Most questions require a bit of thinking and working out first.
Just ask yourself: What do I know?
Don’t be scared to write on your paper what you know, or little notes that help, as long as you don’t write them in the answer space.
For example:
Question
Here are the number of goals scored over 10 football matches
2 1 3 3 1 2 1 1 1 0
Find the mode
Ask yourself: What do I know?
If you cannot remember what mode means, you may at least remember the other types of averages, such as mean, median, and range. Do you know what any of these mean?
Mean - add up the pieces of data and divide by the number of pieces of data you have.
Median - the middle value when the data is placed in order
Range - the difference between the highest and lowest values (highest value take away lowest value)
What else is there? The mode! So this must be the one where you give the most common value.
Solution
Mode = most common value, therefore the mode number of goals scored is 1.
3. What do I need to know?
This step is all about bringing your focus back to the aim of the question so that you do not waste your time working out stuff that will not help you, or so that you don't end up giving the wrong answer.
From the example in part 1 about train travel time, the answer to "What do I need to know?" is "I need to know the time taken in minutes", and you can start using the information you have to get to the final answer.
Many pupils just get stuck because they don't remember what to do. Don't be scared to use the information you have (part 2) to try out different ways of getting to an answer. Make an attempt!
4. Show your working
This is really important. Even if your final answer is wrong but you have shown correct working, you will still get most of the marks. If you write down a correct answer without showing the working, you will probably lose a lot of marks.
Your workings can also help you when checking your answer.
5. Check your work
It is very hard to go back over your paper and identify your mistakes, but there are techniques you can learn.
Ask yourself the following types of questions:
- Have I answered the question properly? (What was the aim of the question?)
- Have I left my answer to the correct degree of accuracy? (1 decimal place, 3 significant figures, etc.)
- Does the answer seem right? (Is it a big enough number?)
- Have I written the correct units?
- Is my final answer clear? Is my working clear? (Examiners need to be able to read your answers!)
- Can I put my answer back into the equation to check it is right? (x=2, does that go into 3x + 2 = 8?)
If you have time at the end of the paper, do not waste this time day-dreaming - check your answers by asking yourself these types of questions. Also, go back to any questions you have left blank and try writing anything that you remember to help you answer the question.
If you have any questions about this 5-Step technique, please email mathshints@gmail.com
