Get Your Brain Into Training

The Age

Monday September 8, 2008

Rachael Whittle - Rachael Whittle is a VCE assessor

What works for Olympic athletes can work for students, advises Rachael Whittle.

THE athletes who competed in the Beijing Olympics planned, prepared and trained for their event, leaving nothing to chance and ensuring that they went into the competition thoroughly prepared, giving themselves the best chance to bring home a gold medal.

The same can be said about the VCE physical education examination. You need to plan, prepare and train to ensure that you give yourself the chance to do your best on the exam.

Your planning should start with an understanding of the examination criteria and knowledge of the key concepts that are examinable.

There are five criteria that you will be examined against. All of the key knowledge and skills in both Units 3 and 4 are examinable.

While it is important to be familiar with the key knowledge it is also worth noting the terminology used in the key skills.

Terms such as explain, analyse, identify, describe, compare and interpret are used in the study design and are often replicated in the exam. These are the things you should be able to do.

Examiners are less likely to ask you to give a definition or purely recall a piece of knowledge, they are more interested in seeing if you are able to apply the knowledge you have gained throughout the year and structure the examination questions accordingly.

The examination often uses different forms of stimulus material to form a question, such as graphs, tables, diagrams or pictures.

The information contained in the stimulus material will need to be used to answer the question.

Students must either refer back to the stimulus material or use an example from the data supplied to support or justify the answer they have given.

Question 10 of last year's paper asked students to describe an association between two variables shown on a graph.

Firstly, they needed to interpret the graph and secondly, for two marks, link the lesson context (teacher instruction, skill practice and fitness) to the intensity of the activity (vigorous, moderate or low).

A good answer was one that clearly described this association. For example: "as the students moved from teacher instruction to fitness work the amount of vigorous intensity physical activity increased".

Be sure to provide enough information for assessors.

A question that requires an outline and is worth one mark requires you to write a sentence as opposed to a question that asks you to list or state your response.

For example, on last year's paper, question 4 asked students to outline two risk management strategies to reduce the risk of injuries. "Protect the ground" is not an outline but "change the venue for training so that the ground is only used for games to protect the surface" is an outline.

Last year, Lactate Inflection Point (LIP) was examined for the first time and was an area not handled well by the students.

Question 5 from last year's paper asked students what happens to the blood lactate concentration at intensities beyond LIP. From the graph students should have been able to see blood lactate increases.

The second part of the question asked students to explain why fatigue increases at exercise intensities beyond LIP.

A good answer stated that at exercise intensities beyond LIP, the body needs to rely more heavily on the anaerobic system and this results in the accumulation of metabolic by products as there is insufficient oxygen to break these down and consequently fatigue occurs. The third part of this question then asked students to apply their understanding of LIP to a sporting situation.

Students were asked to identify which measure, VO2 max. or LIP would distinguish between performances of middle and long-distance runners and then give a reason for the answer they chose.

Understanding that athletes with a higher LIP will be able to sustain a higher intensity of activity for a prolonged period (they will be able to work harder for longer) was required.

You are required to have a thorough understanding of LIP, its relationship to anaerobic metabolism, changes to blood lactate concentrations and fatigue with exercise intensities beyond LIP, methods for estimating LIP and the use of LIP estimates in reference to exercise prescription and athlete performance.

The preparation phase includes organisation of your notes, practical work, texts, study cards, SACs and handouts from your teacher.

Put together a glossary of terms to help remember correct terminology and to use it in your answers on the exam.

The difference between a mediocre answer and an excellent answer can be the use of correct terminology.

The best training you can do for any event is to have match practice. For exams, doing past papers is the key. They not only give an indication of how the key knowledge may be examined but also allow you to become familiar with formatting, different styles of questions and the type of stimulus materials that may be used.

The assessment report contains the solutions and also focuses on common errors and comments on the strengths and weaknesses of student responses.

Looking at the type of responses that the examiners were looking for will help with your understanding of the topic.

So, like Stephanie Rice who won multiple gold medals in Beijing, if you put into place a plan to succeed, prepare yourself to the best of your ability and train hard, your end-of-year examination result could be a gold-medal performance.

Rachael Whittle is a VCE assessor.

© 2008 The Age

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