PracBee senior teacher, Ms Shivani Azad, has a detailed conversation with Shreeam Chakraborty, a dedicated student of grade 10 in an IB (International Baccalaureate) school in Indonesia. They discussed her studying strategies, her routine, her extracurricular activities and how Shreeam tracks and monitors her preparation for IB exams. Her schools also support students to take IGCSE exams if they want to and Shreeam discussed around that as well.
They also discussed the challenges she faces while studying, and her future goals. With the teacher's help, Shreeam also shared her experience of handling schoolwork, revision and practice at home and how Personalized 1:1 tutoring for IB and support from PracBee was key to her progress and success.
Shreeam mentioned that she is 15 years old, is in Grade 10 in a school in Jakarta in Indonesia in Gandhi Memorial InterContinental school. Since she has always been in IB board, her focus is also to score well in her school exams and then Board exams. Later she wants to get into studying medicine to become a doctor or explore other options in Science stream itself.
Like most IB students, Shreeam has a good set of hobbies, which helps her grow with a with a well-rounded personality. She loves to read books especially fiction including Sherlock Holmes, watch movies, drawing or exercising. More importantly, she is quite regular with her studies and likes to study. Even when she is not motivated to study at times, she has built a routine which helps her maintain that discipline of studying and revising daily.
Shreeam tries to remain ahead of the syllabus completed in her school through Pracbee 1:1 Personalized classes and practice at home. She likes Physics and Biology more. She finds Math and Chemistry challenging at times and hence tries to spend more time with these subjects. As a very disciplined student, Shreeam understands her weak and strong subject areas and topics in each subject. This helps her divide her time proportionately to these areas as per need. It helps her utilize her time best and score well in the exams.
For example, a subject like Chemistry, which she finds challenging because of a lot of facts to be memorized, she spends time accordingly. Also, her teachers are helping her remember for longer through use of memory tricks and mnemonics. Since there are a lot of concepts and many exceptions as well, teachers take out time to focus more on these concepts and ensure that she understand really well, so that she does not only retain her knowledge but also apply those in the exam and tests she has to undertake.
In Mathematics, she sometimes struggles with her calculations which can lead to silly mistakes. Especially in Arithmetic topics like Percentage etc she needs help of her teacher and mentor. The teacher ensures that her basics are done well, since Math is a subject where basic understanding can really help a student improve her level of problem solving.
Her Math teacher also encourages her to practice more questions, especially those of BODMAS and basic algebra so that her formulae are really thorough and she doesn’t make silly mistakes.
Like a professional athlete, Shreeam believes that mistakes are her best teachers. These help her revise better and cover up the gaps in her concepts and problem solving. She joined Pracbee 1:1 Personalized tutoring for IB classes because her friends referred her. They have been studying with Pracbee and really enjoy the classes as well. Shreeam especially enjoys her Math classes because of the progress she has been able to achieve due to 1:1 teaching. She can ask her doubts at any point of time and her teacher goes at exactly the level Shreeam is at. Pracbee teachers also help her with the doubts she had in her school and homework. This way she is able to save time as well as progress better in her school as well.
Shreeam especially emphasized on Past Year Questions that Pracbee teachers help her with. Since IB and even IGCSE boards often ask questions similar to past year papers, so this problem solving in class has increased her confidence. And with more confidence comes the higher motivation to study, learn and do well in exams.
Shreeam also keeps track of various papers and their codes for the exams. As she has noticed over the years the Past Year questions in a subject has come from different coded papers as well. For example, in IGCSE board they are currently following the paper pattern 0610 for biology and her school teachers suggested to practice from past papers but actually they're taking questions from 0590 biology. SO, this alertness and knowledge has helped her be better prepared for the exams.
Even in Math, they had 0580 which was easier than 0607 that they are following right currently. However, she ensures to solve past year papers a lot so that she can attempt all similar questions in the board exam easily.
Shreeam also ensures that she understands the marking schemes very well. In school exams she tries to observe where her marks were deducted. While solving questions she also tries to track time per question. If a question took more time than usual, she would mark it and try to solve it next time with less time.
When it comes to her 1:1 class at Pracbee, Shreeam best likes the friendly nature of the teachers and the classes. This made her very comfortable with her classes. She can ask doubts, have a detailed discussion, ask for more examples etc without hesitation. This has also helped her improve on the topics going on in the school. Most often teachers at Pracbee try to sync the classes with the topics going on in her school.
She especially enjoys 1:1 classes because teachers make her speak and so it is easier for her doubts to come out and get cleared. In a batch class she feels she could not get the chance to ask her doubts as teachers have less time. Also, in a batch classes teachers go at an average pace while in 1:1 tutoring the teachers move at her pace, which is helping Shreeam, especially in Math. The class is fully oriented for that one student and so focuses more on the topics that Shreeam finds difficult.
As Shreeam had mentioned earlier, she wants to complete her syllabus earlier so that she gets a lot of time to revise and practice extra questions, especially past years’ questions. This is her strategy to score well in the exams and teacher in her 1:1 IB classes also follow that. While her school covered some topics really fast, she is able to cover those step-by-step in Pracbee with her 1:1 tutors.
While there are a lot of activities going on in her school at any point of time, Shreeam tries her best to balance between he activities and studies. Especially since the school has its own homework and Pracbee teachers also assign practice work to do, bit Shreeam has realized that Pracbee practice actually helps her do well in her school. Since her tutors not only clear her school doubts also but ensure she understands her concepts very well, which comes handy in school exams.
Even when her school exams are quite close, she informs her Pracbee 1:1 tutors, who them help with the topics that are coming in the school exam. This flexibility of topics coverage has really helped her with her exams. Pracbee tutors also gave her practice tests before her school exams which also ensured she did well in the exams.
Though Shreeam does a lot of extracurricular activities, including learning piano, besides those earlier mentioned, she tries to cancel those when her exams are quite close. This is another of her secret tactics to do well in the exams. Focus highest on them when they are close. She tries to balance the time between her multiple subjects so that she doesn’t fall behind in any subject.
Since she is a bit of a foodie, so she loves to have good food to motivate her to study more, especially during exams. It is a good strategy that other students can use. They may have their own favourite pastimes or mood lifters and can use that to study in a more focused way for exams. have is I'm actually a bit of foodie so I keep good food around me and then I study and you know have some good food
Another tip Shreeam has is to take rest in between her studies so that it doesn’t get very tiresome. She takes naps if she is very tired to energize her and ensure she can start fresh again. She wants to become a doctor in future but she is very clear to focus on her current grade and exams till grade 10.
Shreeam understands the importance and inevitability of competitive exams for admission to top MBBS colleges, that’s why she suggests to take some Olympiad exams, to get used to such competitive exam patterns, especially of Math and the Science subjects.
However, she is quite pragmatic as well. currently she is focused only on her board exams and not looking too far ahead. And all her efforts are going towards scoring her best in the Board exams. And this is exactly where her tutors at Pracbee are also focused on.
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