Final Exam Review Packet: Fill & Download for Free

Have a good reason.I mean a solid, no crap, reason that you could not prepare for the test.Sudden illness with hospitalization, death in the family the day of the test, car accident on the way to the test; these I will listen to.“I was on vacation with my family the week before the test and I forgot to take my notes with me and the WiFi wasn’t working so I couldn’t download your review packet” fell on unsympathetic ears.“I thought I was excused from final exams because I was a Senior” MIGHT have been listened to, if I had not put “Seniors Test Date” on the calendar and reviewed it with the class.

I had two final exams.They weren’t even during finals week so I basically got a free week to pack.Theatre courses aren’t big on final exams, in that theatre is far more practical—it’s not about learning facts. It’s about doing.My finals were also a month ago. I’ve been done since early May.But, here’s what I did have to do:One final paper for Philosophy on “What did you learn in this class?” (no joke)One fully annotated prompt book with analysis work for Playscript AnalysisTwo geology exams—one lab exam and one lecture examMy Individual Performance course had no exams (or grades of any kind, really) and my education course’s final was to turn in a packet in mid-February.I got off easy, y’all.I prepared for my Philosophy paper by going to every single class period and also making jokes about New Jersey in my paper. My professor’s favorite line was “If we want to make it illegal to self-harm, we also have to make it illegal to move to New Jersey”.I got a 100%. He was all about putting in effort.My prompt book kicked my ass.It doesn’t sound too bad, but this is what it involved:For the Whole Play:Choose a character you think is the protagonist. Describe their polar attitude at the beginning and end of the play.Describe your chosen character’s desires, will, moral stance and decorum in a few short paragraphs and come up with a list of summary adjectives for them.Describe the idea of the play: be sure to discuss the symbolic meaning of the title, the outcome of the action and what your underlined philosophical statements (see below) have to do with the idea.For 10 Minutes of the Play:Complete Given Circumstances including the Environmental Facts and Previous Action underlined and explained; be sure to describe how your previous action is being used in the present action of the scene.Any philosophical statements underlinedA Dialogue AnalysisA Unit breakdown with units titled with a nominative phraseA Line-by-Line action breakdownA Unit Action Summary for each unit.Your character’s mood intensity at the beginning of the ten minutesThe tempo of each unit in word form and the rhythm of your scene(s) as expressed in graph formThe mood of each unit expressed in sensory adjectives and mood metaphorPartial Concept/Creative Research – 40 points (25 description, 15 for Creative Research)Peer Presentations (20 points)And people say theatre is easy.This took me about 25 hours in total. I did the play Eclipsed by Danai Gurira and I think I read it easily 15 times.It doesn’t look like a lot, but a “line-by-line action breakdown” is when you take every line of ten minutes of the play and assign it a verb. And my professor was picky about which verbs were active and which weren’t.Imagine reading a few pages of a book and giving every sentence a summary word. That’s essentially what I was doing.The “mood of each unit” would be like reading a book, and at the end of each chapter going “now, what did this chapter smell like?”Yeah.It was tedious work. And bizarre, at times.This one kicked my ass. I ended up getting a 139/140 on it (one point off—for grammar. I was as disappointed in myself as you are.), so I’m proud of that. But it was hard-earned.Geology scared the shit out of me.I’m really bad at science. Like, really, really bad. I studied for hours for my first lab exam and got an 85%—after 10% of extra credit. I don’t understand rocks. There is no difference between that pink rock and k-spar. The pink one was bigger but I swear, it looked just like k-spar.I know what scoria is, though!My prep for these exams involved going into the lab and looking at maps. Fortunately, my second exam was not a rock identification exam.I’m good with maps—bad with directions, but good with reading maps. I studied structural geology and PLS notation and random shit about fossils.And fracking. Lots and lots of fracking.I got an A on my lab exam. That felt pretty good.For my lecture exam, I did some vague review over volcanoes and Los Angeles’ water and earthquakes and oil and climate change. I didn’t worry too much. My preparation was half-assed at best.I got an A. That professor writes easy exams, really.I coped fine with finals, if only because I didn’t have real finals. I love projects because you can take a month to work on them and get them right.Exams are stupid. I’m not a fan.But finals went well for me, really. I got off easy.

Ten easy steps for destroying all love of reading and instead instilling a lifelong hatred of otherwise amazing literature (even books the kids would enjoy reading on their own.)1. Pretest the student's vocabulary knowledge of words in the book. Make it abundantly clear in red ink that the students do not know lots of words. Express your disappointment in their lack of effort.2. Assign specific pages and chapters for tomorrow's class. Inform them that they are not to read ahead.3. Read some of it aloud in class. Better if you simply read to them in the most monotone, robotic, emotionless voice you can muster. Or, randomly pick on students who have struggled historically with reading and make them read two pages aloud. Mock them openly if they stumble, or patronizingly correct their mistakes and applaud them if they do improve in the most passive-aggressive manner you can muster. Best results if done on Shakespeare with no prior experience.4. Do not discuss the themes or concepts in the novel. Quiz them instead. Make sure to include detailed minutiae such as the color of the pants worn by the protagonist (and make sure to use words like protagonist, and quiz those, too.) Under no circumstances allow these quizzes to be open book. Randomize them so students don't know when the quiz might be coming. Express your disappointment with red ink and loud sighs when you pass them back.5. Assign an analysis paragraph following a standardized model with a good acronym like TEALs or TIQuAC. Make sure it's about something that students find meaningless. Do not discuss why it's meaningful, but dock them significantly if they can't express why it is. Do this for every chapter or scene. Do not allow them to analyze relevant themes or things they found significant. Instead, make sure to have them analyze the use of rhetorical devices and classical literary tropes. Make sure to tell them, "You'll probably never use this in your personal writing, but..."6. Give the students each a study guide that they have to complete chapter by chapter. Include vocabulary. Make it due in class so they can't use Google for help. Do not allow them to work with partners.7. One day, break them randomly into small groups. Assign them meaningless projects peripherally related to the text. Make sure to stick one go-getter with each group that will do all the work for the other students, then downgrade the entire group for "not working together."8. Refuse to answer any applicable questions they have. Tell them they are not reading closely enough. Give them a handout packet with strategies like SQ3R or Reciprocal Reading. Do not explain under any circumstances why these are helpful, just give them to the students with no formal training.9. Give the students a comprehensive, 100 question multiple choice Scantron (or otherwise computer graded) test. Assign an analysis paper due the day of the test, and significantly limit the topics they may choose from to three insignificant quotes. Do not give a review day. Best if clearly visible that this exam was copied from a teacher's edition of the textbook and purchased with a canned curriculum.10. Never again even mention the book. Three months later, give a comprehensive, closed book, two hour multiple choice semester final exam that includes mostly questions stolen from the multiple choice unit exam earlier in the semester. Best if used from a canned curriculum you purchased. Include at least a half-dozen questions that were never once even brought up in the original reading of the novel.I can promise you that students will have an utter loathing for all reading, even popular books like the Hunger Games trilogy, if you follow these simple steps to being a genuinely awful teacher.The terrible teachers are not the ones who use bad strategies. They're the ones who use good strategies poorly, without ever explaining what they are doing or why to the students.