4 Exam Mistakes Costing Your Health and Movement Science Students Marks

Your students know the content. You have taught it. They can talk about it. And then the paper comes back and it is three out of six.

Sound familiar?

This week on The PDHPE & CAFS Podcast I am naming the four mistakes I keep seeing Health and Movement Science students make. Not knowledge gaps. Habits. And habits are teachable.

Mistake 1: They are not planning their answer.

Kids read the question and go straight into the lines. No pause. No plan. Ideas stay stuck in their head instead of landing on the page.

It takes 30 seconds to a minute to plan properly. That is it.

The fix is RUN FAR:

• Read the question in its entirety
• Underline the syllabus points and circle the Glossary of Key Words
• Name any definitions or syllabus terms
• Formulate a plan of attack around the question
• Answer in the lines provided, using the marks as your guide
• Reread the response

Grab and go for your classroom:

• Build planning time into in class assessment tasks. Five minutes, no writing in the lines
• Model it on the board before students attempt a question independently
• Make planning visible and expected, not optional

RUN FAR did not come from a textbook. It came from two of my students back in 2008. Meaghan and Jess were writing all around the question in an in class task and I asked them what they were doing. Miss, we are planning our answer. Nearly 20 years later I am still sharing it across NSW.

Mistake 2: Their examples are not specific enough

Students regurgitate content. They give the definition. They mention a sport without naming one. Markers are looking for application and that is where the marks sit.

A four marker with content only might be a three. A six marker with a definition and no glossary might be a three. Those marks add up right across the paper.

The fix is SUAVE:

• Specific to the question
• Unique, not lifted from the textbook or the syllabus examples
• Applied to what the question is actually asking
• Varied, so students are not recycling one example across every response
• Explicit, so the marker is in no doubt

Grab and go for your classroom:

• Build a class bank of examples students can draw from
• Take a generic example and rewrite it together until it is unique and explicit
• Check for variety, not just accuracy, when you mark practice responses

Mistake 3: They are not applying the Glossary of Key Words

Teachers know explain means show cause and effect. What is harder is knowing what that actually looks like in a response and how to teach it.

ALARM shows progression from one word to the next. It does not show students how to prove to a marker that they are doing the verb.

These are doing words. Discuss does not look like analyse. Analyse does not look like explain. Our students are losing serious marks here.

Grab and go for your classroom:

• Teach the steps inside each verb, not just the definition
• Show students annotated responses so they can see the verb in action
• Get students coding their own responses against the verb

Mistake 4: Not enough detail

Wide but not deep. Students know a definition, usually from a textbook and a textbook was never designed to go deep. It is an overview.

The real cause sits with us. We feel the pressure to get through the content. Tick it off. Move on.

Please slow right down.

I did exactly this for my first five years. My kids had beautiful notes. I was talking at them, not teaching them.

Grab and go for your classroom:

• Check for understanding before you move on, every single time
• Swap note copying for discussion, application and practice
• Make links across to Year 12 concepts as you teach Year 11 content

Where to start

Do not try to fix all four at once. Pick one. Add a bit more explicit teaching. Add some exam practice. Get students breaking down the question before they write.

Little baby steps into your toolkit. You will see the difference in your students application.

Next steps

• Listen to the full episode: thelearnnet.com/182
• Grab the free RUN FAR, SUAVE and Glossary of Key Words posters: thelearnnet.com/maximise
• Get the exam prep questions, coded responses and exemplars already built for you inside The HMS Membership: thelearnnet.com/hms

And if you are joining us at the HMS Summit at Sydney Olympic Park this Thursday and Friday, I cannot wait to see you there.