Pixeled Multimedia Teachers Association

For me its holiday time - three weeks off teaching and time to start marking SACS and creating resources for the year 12 mock exam. When I'm creating the mock exam I generally steer clear of the VCAA end of year exams and I've been wondering lately why I do this. Surely it would be easier to use an exam that is put out by VCAA as this will give the students some idea of how to follow the format of the final exam. However, I find the wording on VCAA exams can confuse students so I prefer to go through them in class. My mock exams focus on what I've taught my students throughout the year - in my own language. This allows the students to feel confident under the stressful conditions of any exam. They don't always get the answers right of course but the point of mock exams is to practice exam technique, meaning that students give themselves enough time to answer the questions and complete the practical tasks. Once they've mastered exam technique they can then focus more upon answering the questions.

So as far as creating a mock exam I do follow the VCAA one in the sense that I put in roughly the same amount of questions, a flash animation exercise and a website. Basically this is standard on each exam - throwing in a flowchart/algorithm is also helpful. In the end though, it will always depend on the ability of the student, whether they have revised for the topic and whether they have practised putting websites and flash together.