Dean of Studies | Mr Mason Hellyer

An essential aspect of any successful organisation is to celebrate success and recognise individual excellence. On Tuesday night, as a learning community, we were able to celebrate and recognise the academic excellence of our student body. I again congratulate every student who was awarded an academic honour on Tuesday night. Attaining an Academic Excellence award, a First in a subject or Most Improved award takes hard work and dedication. However, and I believe, most importantly, by very publicly recognising academic success and improvement, we send a strong message to our students that, at Terrace, academic success is valued. This recognition of the core value of learning and striving to be the best that you can be is one of the drivers of Terrace’s Academic Culture. Congratulations to all award winners, and also all those who performed, organised and took part in a wonderful evening.

On Tuesday afternoon, the final external exam was held for our Japanese students. This exam saw the completion of exams for our Year 12 cohort. Over 17 days, the Seniors participated in 31 exams. The manner with which the cohort approached their exams has set an academic standard for future Senior groups. Our 2020 Seniors were prepared, focused, and worked hard through to the final seconds of each paper. My congratulations and thanks to all students, and also the Senior teaching staff who guided preparation, provided support and encouragement and led open classroom sessions through the exam block. As a family, we now wait with anticipation for the release of ATAR and QCE results on 19 December.

For our Years 5-11 students, exam block commences on Friday. Some exam tips from our Seniors:

  • Plan what you want to complete every night, plan specifically rather than generally.
  • A tip for efficient study is to keep to the course outline and Moodle checklists in your study as they are what your exams are based around.
  • Try to complete all worksheets and course outlines twice.
  • If you are stuck on a problem, move on to something else and come back to it. Don’t spend hours circling around a single problem.

Make sure that when you sit down to study, you are productive. Set yourself a specific amount of work that you want to complete within a time period and make a conscious effort to remain focused and avoid distraction. I always found that finding and completing questions – writing them by hand – was a far more effective method of study than just reading through the material. Completing a response to a question requires you to be focused and engaged. However, it is far too easy to skim over a paragraph whilst thinking about something else. Studying effectively will allow you to work through more material, and will give you more time away from studying, which is also important. (Patrick Sharkey, 2017 College Dux).

Best of luck to all students with their final exams for the year.