Year 12 Ancient/Modern - Revision Advice

Hi Ancients and Moderns. The end is very nearly nigh, as we cruise into the home straight before the HSC next month.

We have started our revision in class (the whole syllabus has been tackled - hurray!) but you should now be formulating your home study plans.

Everyone has a different way of learning, but I will give you some very general tips.

1) First, print off a copy of the four relevant syllabus pages for your class topics. You can access them via the link to each syllabus to the left of this post.

Ancient: Pompeii, Sparta, Greek World 500-44BC, Xerxes
Modern: WW1, Germany, Conflict in Europe, Albert Speer

2) For each dot point in the syllabus, take a sheet of A4 paper, and try to write a page of notes on that point. You could do it as a mindmap, or as full sentences, or as dot points. Whatever works best.

3) If you can't scrape together a page of notes - you need to study that topic in more detail! Go back to your books and do some reading!

4) Then, have a go at some past exams. Go to this page to access past exam papers, from 2001 to 2008:

http://www.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/hsc_exams/

5) Download the papers, try writing responses in Word (set yourself the same time limit as you would have in the HSC), and email them to me. I will gladly read and comment on them.

6) Get used to all of the relevant terms used by the Board of Studies. Go to this page to make yourself familair with words like describe, outline, assess, explain, evaluate, account for:

http://www.boardofstudies.nsw.edu.au/syllabus_hsc/glossary_keywords.html

7) Make some judgements about what we have learned this year. As you are revising, ask yourself, 'What do I think about this?' Was Xerxes a tyrant? Was Speer a self-serving opportunist? Was Hitler a madman? Did the Great Depression cause the rise of the Nazi party? Was Sparta a democracy? Was the battle of Salamis really a turning point? Why did Germany lose WW1? Was the Treaty of Versailles too harsh? Did the Soviet Union win WW2 for the Allies? What is the most important building excavated at Pompeii? Should we display the casts of human bodies pioneered by Fiorelli?

Remember - take a stance, and support it with evidence.

8) For each topic, memorise four or five short and general quotes. Quotes always look good in an essay! Find some that you could sue in a wide range of essays. Maybe some Pliny for Pompeii, Herodotus for Xerxes/Greek World, Plutarch for Sparta...

9) If there are gaps in your knowledge - now is the time to fill them. Email me - I'm here to help!

Good luck!!

Year 12 Modern - End of WW2 PowerPoint

As promsied, here is the PowerPoint we watched on Tuesday. It summarises the last few years of the war, from Stalingrad to Berlin:

The End of World War Two

Uploaded on authorSTREAM by tomgriffith | Upload your own presentation

You can download it here.

Year 12 Modern - The End of World War Two

Hi Modern folks. Welcome back after the trials, and welcome to the end of the war. We are going to polish off the Conflict in Europe topic by the end of next week, and then it's on to some good old-fashioned revision.

First: a few of the online resources we used in class yesterday, inlcuding some rather cool Nazi newsreel footage. I'll put the PowerPoint up soon as well.

You can access an animated map with an overview of WW2 here.

Here is the Youtube clip showing the rescue of Mussolini in 1943:



And here is the clip showing the Battle of Kursk:



And finally, the last film footage of Hitler, awarding medals to some alarmingly young Hitlerjugend members:

Year 12 Ancient - Persepolis

Hi guys, and welcome back after the trials. The verdict seems to be: more on Greek World, more on Xerxes, more on Sparta...which is fine, because that's what we'll be doing. You are getting better and better at Pompeii (you have been tested on it three times, now) but we will come back to that some time before the end of term.

In today's lesson, we looked at this great website from livius.org, focusing on the building and reliefs at Persepolis. it really is worth a closer look, if only to see some of the beautiful ruins that still remain after 2500 years. Click on the links and enjoy.