Apologia Marine Biology How do I help my daughter with the tests?

[Cindy in WA]

Our daughter took her first test yesterday and didn't do all that well.

 

She read the chapter, took notes, did the oyo's and the study guide. She really did put forth great effort.

 

She got 100% on the vocabulary. But as we went over the test one question at a time, I noticed that overall the ones she missed were not in the oyo's or study guide and were not bold faced or underlined in the text.

 

How do I help her when the normal study pattern didn't work?

Thank you,

Cindy

[Guest Katia]

My dd just took her first Marine Biology test last week and didn't do so well either. She has taken 4 previous Apologia courses, so she knows the study routine. Just as with your dd, she did fine on the vocabulary.

 

What we did, was I put a little star in pencil beside the questions that she either got wrong or that didn't match exactly with the answer key, and then she re-read the test question and looked for the answer in the text as one would in an open-book test.

 

We found that on two questions she had answered correctly what was in the text and that the answer key had only used part of the text; like the last portion of the paragraph in the text, whereas dd had used the first portion. It was still correct.

 

One of them dd didn't read the question correctly and when she had a chance to re-read the test question she answered it fine.

 

I think on the whole, dd understood the concepts taught very well, but was having problems with the test questions themselves.

 

It could also be that because this is a 'new' text with a different author she will just have to adjust to what this particular instructor wants in tests and as far as study goes. So, over the next several chapters she will get to see what this author/instructor wants. I'm telling dd that this is similar to what she will find in college: different professors want different things and sometimes it just takes a while to find what they want.

 

I think what you are doing for study sounds fine. We study the vocab, the OYO but mostly the study guide and any diagrams that were one the study guide. This has worked well for Apologia's General Science, Physical Science, Biology and Advanced Biology. I *hope* this works with the Marine Biology as well. :001_smile:

 

Let me know how the year progresses with your dd and the tests, and let me know if you find any other study methods that have better results than what we are doing, ok?

[Lolly]

I would just suggest letting her reanswer the missed questions for half credit using her book. If it is a true false type of question, have her put the page number and paragraph the answer is found in. She will most likely learn to figure out what types of questions will be coming. Normally, you have to go through this for each book/teacher in school. Learning the teacher's thinking patterns for tests is part of the process.