PE veteran reveals top tips for HSC exam

A PE teacher has revealed why every HSC student can get question one correct in tomorrow’s exam, and also gives some tips on time management.

Veteran PDHPE teacher Susan Turnbull who has taught in a range of schools across the government and non-government sector has revealed her top tips for students — and reveals why every students in the state will get the first question correct.

Know your syllabus

If they don‘t know the content, they might not be able to answer with the dot points underneath that question when it is presented in the exam.

Multiple choice

Students shouldn’t over think the first couple of multiple choice questions. The attitude of the marker when they are setting out a paper is to start the simpler multiple choice first.

It is a long story, but at a conference years ago, they said every kid got question one wrong. I put up my hand and said that’s silly, why don’t we give them question one moving forward so they have a bit of confidence, because that is what PE should be about. The person who wrote the exam said that makes perfect sense and since then —so the first couple of multiple choice aren’t hard.

Susan Turnbull, who has been teaching since the 80s, said the course benefited students no matter how they performed in the exam because they learned about living a healthy life. iStock.

Know Public Health Policy

You have got to know the Ottawa Charter whether it is in the paper or not in the paper.

There is going to be reference to it. It talks about preventive strategies which are proactive rather than curative practices.

If students don‘t know it, they should be looking into it real quick.

They should also know the main causes of death in women and men. The markers are after trends. For example, dementia is increasing in official statistics and it is related to an ageing population.

Examples

The reality is there is a lot of short answer questions and what students do wrong is they don‘t think through and answer them.

They don‘t spend the time answering them. Every answer they give must have examples. I always say to my students is the money is in examples.

PE teacher Susan Turnbull says students shouldn’t spend too much time on one question. Picture: istock

Moving through quickly

Every mark is worth a minute and half of your time. If it is a four mark question you should spend six minutes on it before moving on.

If they do that, they will have some time at the end to go over it. Kids spend a long time on a question just worth four marks and they will have an eight mark question and they have just wasted all their time.

Evaluation

The examiners are looking for student‘s evaluation in the answers — it is a tricky exam but it is an exam they can do well in. The more they draw on specific examples, the better they are going to go.