This study plan is designed to help you prepare for the NSW Selective School (but this study plan can also be used if you are studying for the Victorian Police exam, PSO exam and defence force recruiting and those exams, from my knowledge are also written by ACER).  It assumes that you’re at a B+ grade in school already and that you can add, subtract, multiply and divide along with doing things like fractions.  Here are some baseline questions:

1. Do you know what a hexagon is?
2. Do you know what a triangular prism is?
3. Which of these are fractions: one-half, 25%, 0.46 and can you convert each one to the other formats?
4. If you add the total angles of a triangle how many degrees do you get?  How about if you were to do the same to a square or rectangle?

If you are not confident with those baseline questions or if you want to solidify your knowledge, prior to going through the study plan, I would start off going through chapter by chapter of a Year 7 text books.  You can pick one up at your local library, school library or failing that, go to the book depository or amazon.  Going through the chapters of the book may take some time (1 month if you’re dedicated) but again study smart - if there’s an area you know, skip it and move onto the next.

I guess the downside with textbooks are that they’re  theory based.  You do a lot of practice questions to solidify your knowledge of the theory (e.g. What is 1/4 of 80?) but the practice questions are very direct.  On the other hand, ACER practice questions require a lot of reasoning and application on your part to the question at hand (e.g. do I use fractions on this? should I multiply? should I divide? ahhh… what should I do???).  So that’s when we get onto the study plan.

Remember the study plan draws upon existing sources:

• Practice Papers written by ACER provided on the NSW Department of Education’s website here.
• Exam Success’ Course for Mathematics and Numerical Reasoning at www.examsuccess.com.au (available to purchase from mid-late August 2014)

So here it is for mathematics… note that it also include numerical reasoning as ACER math tests tend to converge onto numerical reasoning.

Study Plan for Mathematics and Numerical Reasoning

[table tablesorter=“o” class="table table-border]

Week, Activities, Milestones

1,Do Practice Question Maths 1 without time limit,Practice Exam

2,Review Maths 1 results,Debrief on Exam

3,Do Practice Questions Maths 2,Practice Exam

4,Do Practice Questions Maths 3,Practice Exam

5,Start Mathematics Course Checkpoint 1 & 2,See Checkpoints

6,Mathematics Course Checkpoint 3,See Checkpoints

7,Mathematics Course Checkpoint 4,See Checkpoints

8,Mathematics Course Checkpoint 5,See Checkpoints

9,Mathematics Course Checkpoint 6,See Checkpoints

10,Mathematics Course Checkpoint 7,See Checkpoints

11,Mathematics Course Checkpoint 8,See Checkpoints

12,Mathematics Course Checkpoint 9,See Checkpoints

13,Mathematics Course Checkpoint 10 & 11 & 12,See Checkpoints

14,“Start Numerical Reasoning Course Checkpoint 1, 2 & 3”,See Checkpoints

15,Numerical Reasoning Course Checkpoint 4,See Checkpoints

16,Numerical Reasoning Course Checkpoint 5,See Checkpoints

17,Numerical Reasoning Course Checkpoint 6,See Checkpoints

18,Numerical Reasoning Course Checkpoint 7,See Checkpoints

19,Numerical Reasoning Course Checkpoint 8,See Checkpoints

20,Numerical Reasoning Course Checkpoint 9,See Checkpoints

21,Numerical Reasoning Course Checkpoint 10 & 11 & 12,See Checkpoints

22,Practice Questions Maths 4 under timed conditions,Practice Exam

[/table]

Checkpoints for Mathematics (Copyright from Exam Success Pty Ltd Course)