Exploration Session: Midterm Strategies

Reminders

The midterm will be held Friday from 5:15-6:15PM in Kane Hall 110. Please be in the room by 5:05 so we can get id's checked before the exam.

We will provide a detailed cheat sheet for you to use during the exam (see exams page on course website). You may not bring any notes/books to the exam and electronics must be silenced/put away.

You may assume $, qs, and qsa are defined for you (shorthand for document.getElementById, document.querySelector, and document.querySelectorAll, respectively)

There will be an exam strategy/review session for the Exploration Session today.

Good luck!

Exam Format

You should expect any of the following topics to be covered in the exam:

  • HTML (Writing and/or Validating)
  • CSS (Writing CSS and/or Selector Mysteries)
  • DOM visualization (drawing the DOM tree of HTML elements)
  • JavaScript DOM/Events
  • JavaScript Animations
  • General Web Development Knowledge (short answer questions)

Study Exercise

For 6 minutes, take a blank piece of paper and:

  • Draw a mindmap of the topics you recall from the quarter so far
  • Large bubbles for key topics (modules)
  • Try to focus on the top-left corner being the "day 1" material, bottom-right being JSON, filling in the rest
  • It's not necessarily linear!
  • Use circles to topics (larger for key topics like layout, smaller for details like margin/padding/border)
  • Use squares for exercises you recall related to the topics (section/lab/hw/csbs/practice exams)
  • Draw lines connecting fundamental topics/exercises

Note: This is freeform - use it as it makes sense to you, but it's important to visualize how everything fits together when you're approaching an exam!

Following up

For 4 minutes, share with your neighbors. Do you have missing/different topics? Examples? Connections?

Next, identify 2 topics you feel confident with, and 2 you feel least confident on

"Top 5" Pre-Exam Tips

Tonight:

  • Make sure you've done an entire practice exam on paper, without notes (review notes after you've finished so you know what you didn't know)
  • At least skim the other practice exams so you know other types of problem formats
  • If you found the previous exercise useful, try doing it on a new blank piece of paper one more time tonight (6 minutes)
  • Take 20-30 minutes somewhere to do something that helps you clear your head, unrelated to school/work (I find number puzzles really helpful before exams).
  • Aim to get 6-8 hours of sleep. Really.

Student QA

Good Luck!

dancing pikachu

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