To effectively prepare for a test students must complete practice questions. This is common sense. If you wished to complete any task you would practice that task before hand:

• Tennis players hit tennis balls.
• Chess players play chess.
• Goal kickers kick goals.
• Horse riders ride a horse.
• Students completing tests need to write the answers which may be expected of them.

Preparing for definition based short questions.

Including multiple choice, definition and word link questions.

1. Students can utilize the key terms on their mind maps and check that they can write a definition for each of these.

2. Students might pair up with another student and ask each other key terms from the topic and write the definition.

3. Place an app called Quizlet on your phone or ipad. (Please ask students in your group to do this) This app allows you to type in a key term and definition and then gives activities to strengthen your understanding.

4. Kahoot is another app which can be utilised to develop activities to test our knowledge of key terms, however it is not as simple as Quizlet and would tend to be used more by a group of students who were studying together and creating activities for the group or by teachers for their group.

Preparing for short answer written responses.

These are similar to the definitional based questions in the first section. In their simplest form the students need to write the definition linked to a key term. However, as the directive term in the question changes the expectation on the student changes. Directive terms will be dealt with in the next section on alarm.

As stated earlier in the simplest form students could use the same methods as multiple choice questions. The difference in this section is the student should be writing the 6-8 line response that would be asked of them in the assessment. Students should also practice writing answers where the directive term has changed from simple name and describe questions up to explain or analyse questions.

Short-answer exam questions

Short-answer exam questions generally require you to remember and reproduce knowledge, e.g. "Define the term fuzzy logic". You may also be required to demonstrate your understanding of knowledge in questions such as "discuss the role of...".

Understanding what type of response the examiner wants requires that you read and analyse the question carefully. To analyse and interpret the question accurately requires a good knowledge of the meaning of direction words.

Preparing for Extended Response Questions.

In an extended response question a student will have multiple sections of their work that they must speak about. In a mind map for example this will come from a major branch of the mind maps with other branches off it or many branches being used. The first important step is to have a strong enough understanding of the mind map to link the appropriate areas to the response. In the simplest form it will be a series of short responses put together.

Students could think of possible questions in their area of study and then use the mind map to identify the key areas that would be discussed. The student could then write the plan for their response and if enough time permits practice writing the response. If you prepare in the correct area you simply need to rewrite this response in your assessment.