作者： Quan, Lizzie

1. Exam Timetable

Do you remember exactly when and which exam is next? Even if you think you can remember, It is a good idea to always have a copy of your timetable on you so you can plan your revision sessions effectively and ensure you next miss an exam.

2. Your student card or ID

Many Exams require you to bring a student card or some form of ID with you to your exam. If you need to, make sure you have it ready the night before to ensure it is not forgotten. 

3. Your exam number 

What is your exam number? Do you know it by heart? Make sure to bring your exam or student number with you. You will need to write this on your paper, so it’s important to have it at all times.

4. Pens/ pencils

It sounds impossible that you’d really forget to bring your pens or pencils to the exam. Unfortunately, in the early morning rush it happens. Never forget your spares!

One more tip: Use the pen/pencil you’re used to.

5. A Watch

Having a watch on your desk will help you to keep track of the time. It’s important to make sure you give yourself enough time for each question, and avoid spending too much time on questions that offer less marks. But, don’t be anxious and keep watching time and forget your paper.

6. Calculator

If you need a calculator, make sure to double check the battery power before you pack it. Like the fourth, you can also prepare an extra battery/calculator just in case. 

7. Lay out your clothes

Try to prepare your clothes the night before so you can get more sleep and relieve some of the anxiety about choosing your outfit the next morning. Try to choose clothes that are as comfortable as possible (often you’ll be wearing your school uniform). It’s a good idea to wear layers so that if the temperature in the exam room changes, you can find something comfortable to wear.

8. Water and some snacks

Put a bottle of water in your bag or you can also bring a snack or two in case you feel hungry after the exam. Water is important for you to function during an intense exam. It also gives you a reason to pause.

I know after reading this article you may still feel nervous and not sure we listed all things you need to prepare. We have all had this feeling the night before an exam, especially when some exams have specific rules or are particularly difficult (Looking at you, Maths). 

What else can you do to relieve yourself? Call a friend and check together! One who has the same exam as you. It’d be much harder for you both to forget!

Sometimes, even if we study hard and think that we prepared well, the result didn’t go as well as we hoped. Anyone who went through this would be disappointed and need a lot of support and parents are the ones who can support our teens most. However, during their down time, how to support them is a big question. Here, we share 5 ways that you may feel you can use.

1. Accept their emotions.

Teens have different ways to handle their not good exam results. Some may express their disappointment directly, like they don’t want to talk with anyone, or are quite sensitive when hearing any word connected with school or exams. Some may pretend to be positive and even become more talkative than usual. What should we do? Tell them ‘it’s okay when they’re crying’? Tell them ‘I know you feel sad inside’? No, No, No. We only need to accept their emotions. During this period, parents can “passively” follow our teens. If they want to talk, then let’s have some fun topics; If they want to hang out alone, don’t need to chase or follow them, just ask when they will come back home as usual as before; If they want to stay alone in their own room and don’t want any interaction between you, then don’t knock that door. They’ll come around eventually, and when they do, we can tell some bit of our exams.

2. Take your teens for a break

Before we have any serious conversation about  this exam, don’t forget it’s the end of a term or phase. Good or not? Both deserve to have a small celebration and take a break. Then there are lots of ways to take a break. You can go on a holiday to other countries like Spain, Greece, Japan or wherever your family is all interested to visit, or you can just go for a movie or a big dinner in a nice restaurant you always go to. Just remember, your teens already revise for a long time, going to bed early–doing all the right things to prepare.

3. Praise for their efforts

Okay, now when we reach a time that our teens are willing to talk about this exam with us. Let’s start with parsing their efforts. Our teens may worry that not-well exam results showed that they didn’t make an effort and sometimes parents may also think this as well. And then they may express this feeling to their children during conversation which is super bad. We all know things not always go where we want and we need to be the mature one in this family. We need to highlight that we saw their effort and we really appreciate that effort they made. Before we go to next step, let them clearly know that we already know what they did!

4. Build their confidence

Teens know that they already study hard but no good result. Then sitting an exam that doesn’t go well can really knock back their confidence. While they’re down, avoid comparing them to their friends or siblings. They may ask you why I can’t do well even though I already revise a lot? What’s wrong with myself? That’s a tricky question, and we need to find what they did well during this exam. You definitely can find out their strength, and you can also catch this time to find out which part may go wrong.

5. Ask them whether they need support

Ater all of these steps, we can say, ‘Hey, Dear, do you need any support? Please let us know what you want us to do.’ Perhaps they have a learning gap in a subject and need extra help from a teacher or specialist tutor. Or, it could be a case of honing their exam skills. Open to your children and make sure that they know that they can rely on you when they indeed need support and whatever support would be.

Children always have unlimited possibilities, and our duties are helping them to achieve.

What’s Child Benefits?

Before we get to know how much Child Benefits you can get, let’s find out what Child Benefits is first.

These benefits usually stop on 31 August after a child turns 16, but if your child is in full-time approved education or training, you can still claim for them until they are 19, or in some cases 20.

Applies to: 

• England
• Wales
• Scotland 
• Northern Ireland

This benefit is not taxable, but Child Benefits could make you liable for a tax charge if you or your partner earn over £50,000.

Here is a tool you can use to get an estimate of Child Benefit tax caculator from the UK government.

Who can get Child Benefit

You get Child Benefit if you’re responsible for bringing up a child who is:

• Under 16
• Under 20 if they stay in approved education or training

Child benefit can only be paid to the primary caregiver of the child. Where there are two children, parents can choose to each receive the benefit for one child each. Child benefit for one child cannot be split between the two parents.

It’s paid every 4 weeks and there’s no limit to how many children you can claim for.

How much Child Benefit will I get?

Once you confirm that you’re eligible to claim child benefits, we can start to calculate how much Child Benefit we can get.

Here are 2 here are 2 Child Benefit rates (as of August 2022): 

• £21.80 a week for your eldest child
• £14.45 a week for each other child

You must contact the Child Benefit Office if you’re paid too much or too little.

*The benefit cap may affect the total amount of benefits you get, including Child Benefit.

And here’s some special situation where may change your Child Benefit:

Child Benefit and your State Pension

If your child is under 12 and you’re not working or do not earn enough to pay National Insurance contributions, Child Benefits can provide National Insurance credits.

These credits count towards your State Pension, so you do not have gaps in your National Insurance record.

If families split up

If a family splits up, you get £21.80 a week for the eldest child.

If you have 2 children and one stays with you and the other stays with your ex-partner, you’ll both get £21.80 a week for each child.

You cannot both claim for the same child, only one of you will get Child Benefit for them.

If you have other children who are entitled to Child Benefit, you’ll get £14.45 for each child.

If families join together

If 2 families join together, the eldest child in the new family qualifies for the £21.80 rate and any other children who are eligible will get the £14.45 rate.

If you or your partner earn over £50,000

You can get Child Benefit if your (or your partner’s) individual income is over £50,000, but you may be taxed on the benefit. This is known as the High Income Child Benefit Tax Charge.

If your partner’s income is also over £50,000 but yours is higher, you’re responsible for paying the tax charge. You need to fill in a Self Assessment tax return each tax year and pay what you owe.

Once you earn £60,000 you lose all of your benefit through tax. Child Benefit rates.

How and When Child Benefit is paid?

Child Benefit is usually paid every 4 weeks on a Monday or Tuesday.

You can have the money paid weekly if you’re a single parent or getting certain other benefits, such as Income Support.

You can get the money paid into any account, apart from a Nationwide cash builder account (sort code 070030) in someone else’s name.

You can only get the money paid into one account.

How do I claim Child Benefit?

Child Benefit can be claimed as soon as you’ve registered the birth of your child, or they come to live with you.

It can take up to 16 weeks to process a new Child Benefit claim (or longer if you’re new to the UK). Child Benefit can be backdated for up to 3 months.

Only one person can get Child Benefit for a child, so you need to decide whether it’s better for you or the other parent to claim. The person who claims will get National Insurance credits towards their state pension if they are not working or earn less than £190 per week.

Making a claim for the first time

Fill in Child Benefit claim form CH2 and send it to the Child Benefit Office. The address is on the form.

You can apply for Child Benefit before registering the birth, if you cannot get an appointment with a register office before your child is 3 months old.

If your child is adopted, send their original adoption certificate with the form. You can order a new adoption certificate if you’ve lost the original.

If you do not have the adoption certificate you need, send your claim form now and send the certificate once you’ve got it.

If your child’s birth was registered outside the UK

When you send your claim form, include your child’s:

• original birth certificate
• passport or travel document used to enter the UK

If you’ve lost the original you can order a new birth certificate.

Your child’s documents will usually be returned within 4 weeks.

Add a child to an existing claim

Call the Child Benefit helpline if all of the following apply:

• your child is under 6 months old and lives with you
• your child was born in the UK
• your child’s birth was registered in England, Scotland or Wales more than 24 hours ago
• you’re a UK or Irish national and you’ve lived in the UK since the start of your claim

When you call, you’ll need your:

• National Insurance number
• child’s birth certificate (if you’ve registered the birth)

Child Benefit Helpline

Telephone: 0300 200 3100

Welsh language: 0300 200 1900

Textphone: 0300 200 3103

Outside UK: +44 161 210 3086

*Monday to Friday, 8am to 6pm

If you do not meet the criteria to add a child by phone

You’ll need to make a new claim by post. Fill in Child Benefit form CH2 and send it to the Child Benefit Office. The address is on the form.

If you’re claiming for more than 2 children, also include the ‘additional children’ form.

If you registered the birth in Northern Ireland.

You’ll need to send the birth certificate by post when you have it.

HM Revenue and Customs – Child Benefit Office

PO Box 1

Newcastle Upon Tyne

NE88 1AA

United Kingdom

Where can we get help with this claim? 

Contact the Child Benefit Office if you have any questions.

You can challenge a decision about your claim. This is called asking for mandatory reconsideration.

You can complain to the Child Benefit Office if you’re unhappy with the way you’ve been treated.

Have a clear reading purpose

• Reading to understand a topic
• Reading to address an exam question

Choose what to read

If you’re reading to understand a topic, start with core and recommended readings in the subject. These are often comprehensive works in the field that explain the key concepts or issues.

Another idea is to ask your teacher for recommendations of texts on a topic. If you have problems understanding key concepts in a subject, you may need to go back to a more basic textbook which explains them at a more fundamental level.

If you are reading to address an exam question, use the key words from the question to search for relevant sources. Most questions would ask for some connection to key concepts discussed in the subject, and so it’s important to use core or recommended readings alongside your own research. While theoretical readings can be a bit older, empirical papers, those that report on research findings, are considered recent if their dates of publication fall within the last ten years.

Preview a text

With any text, you will benefit from first previewing its key information to quickly grasp what it is about overall. Try spending around five minutes reading through the title, abstract (if there is one), the introduction and conclusion and any headings or table of contents. For general understanding of a subject, ask yourself:

• What question(s) do I want to answer by reading this text?
• Does this text contain new and useful information on my topic of interest?

When reading for an assignment, think about how the text is related to the question:

• Can this text help me answer the assignment question in any way?
• If yes, what part of my answer plan does it seem to fit?

Previewing a text helps you to evaluate not only the relevance of a text to your purpose but also its credibility. A text may appear highly relevant to an assignment but may present obvious language problems, biases and inconsistencies. In this case, you may want to forgo engaging with the text if you can, since reading time is precious, and you may have many texts competing for your attention.

Use different ways of reading

You can read different texts, and even different sections of the same text, differently. How you read should depend on what you want to get out of that reading. You can:

1. Skim text for the main idea
2. Scan a text for detail
3. Read a text closely
4. Compare different parts of a text
5. Reflect on the text personally and professionally

Ask critical questions of the text

Asking critical questions helps you to read actively and avoid getting carried away by the details of a text because these questions often require synthesis and interpretation of the whole text. For example, you can ask:

• What is the key argument or message of this text?
• What evidence is presented to support this?
• What makes this evidence convincing or not?
• How does this text relate to my own ideas/assignment plan on the topic?

Take notes of your reading

It’s crucial to take notes while you read, as it gives you a record of ideas that you can use in your assignments and other study activities. If you’ve taken effective notes while reading a text, you usually do not need to re-read it except for quick checks of details. Effective notes go beyond text highlighting and annotation.

• In answer to your own questions of the text.
• In your own words as much as possible – this means more paraphrasing and summarising than direct quoting. Even if you only put down phrases in a dot point format, try to use your own expression. Taking notes in your own words means you’re incorporating others’ ideas into your own writing from the start, making it easier to find your own voice and avoid plagiarism.
• In a format that can be integrated into your assignment plan or study map. As text annotations cannot be collated easily, consider taking notes in a separate document or on separate cards, which can then be consolidated into a bigger writing or study structure.
• In a way that clearly distinguishes the author’s idea and your own idea. Reading usually triggers your own reflection and responses, which you can use for study questions. Consider colour-coding your own ideas to separate them from the author’s, which helps you to know which ideas to reference in your writing.

Connect multiple readings

A typical challenge with reading at school is you usually need to read not only long and highly specialised texts but also many such texts in a limited time. You may be reading multiple sources to understand different views on a topic or to gather information for an assignment.

Apart from the above reading and note-taking strategies, you also need to make connections between texts and compare them to gain big-picture ideas such as similar and different findings on the same topic. This allows you to make moderate, informed generalisations about what you read.

As you read a text, think beyond the text itself to relate it to other readings. Take notes of any links you’ve identified across different texts in your assignment plan or study map. You can use these links to know how to put together notes from individual readings. For example, you might want to summarise a common finding from three different sources to support your argument or juxtapose two contradictory findings to highlight a problem. Here are some questions to help you navigate multiple readings on the same topic:

• What key messages are emerging from these readings?
• What aspects of the topic do they relate to?
• What are the similarities and differences between these messages?
• Which messages have the strongest supporting evidence?
• Based on these observations, what is my view on the topic?

Try jotting down your answers to these questions while reading different sources and come back to revise them often as you continue reading. This will help you to keep sight of the big picture of your topic.

Improve your language skills

For readers of English as a second language, try to notice how language is being used to develop ideas throughout the text. While complex vocabulary and grammar may be a challenge, these can be observed and learned more easily than the way in which ideas are expressed and the cultural meaning that often accompanies it.

Tips for non-native English speakers:

• Pay attention to signposting language in a text – expressions such as The aim of this paper is…, The main limitation of this theory is…, Based on these findings, we propose… can help you to follow the flow of meaning.
• Actively predict what a paragraph or section is about based on the topic sentence and/or heading. After you’ve read it, assess if your prediction was right.
• Learn terms for key concepts and write down your own understanding of these based on the reading.
• Participate in discussions of readings in class and on the LMS.
• Take careful note of the vocabulary central to each subject. Use this vocabulary in your writing and class discussions.
• Practise your language skills regularly and persistently.

Final tip

To read effectively and critically, you need to engage with texts actively through setting a clear purpose, evaluating sources, using different ways of reading, asking big-picture questions, synthesising information and taking good notes. Focus on what you’re learning through reading and how you can apply it to study questions and your personal and professional life.