“Study plan” is often just a list of good intentions: revise more, be more organised, do more exercises. A real plan is something else. It can be checked, it has dates, and above all it says what you are not studying right now.
What follows is the structure I actually use with my students, with a worked example: a Year 4 student at an Italian science high school (liceo scientifico) who, in September, still has the Year 3 algebra catch-up open while trigonometry-style work on goniometry already starts in the first week. The profile is an example, not a real student; the structure is the real one.
The six rules of a readable plan
- You start from where you get stuck, not from the beginning of the syllabus: from the gap you have declared or measured with a test, even if it has been left over since last year.
- Blocks of topics, not textbook chapters. The syllabus is grouped by skill (“goniometry”, “quadratic equations”), not by the order of the contents page.
- Every block has a number of hours and an expected test date. Without these two things it stays an intention, not a plan.
- It is written down what is NOT on the programme. The list of what you are deliberately putting off, and why, not only what you study.
- Review is scheduled, with the dates written down together with the block from the start, not decided “if there is time”.
- Practice tests go at the end, when the theory of the block is already done, not as a way of finding out what is missing.
The most useful rule, almost always, is the fourth. A student who is stuck on goniometry often ends up revising things that seem related as well: a bit of triangle trigonometry, logarithms “just in case”. That takes hours away from exactly the weeks that matter for the real class test.
An example: from catch-up to the goniometry test
| Block | Content | Hours | Weeks | Expected test |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0: Targeted catch-up | Quadratic equations and inequalities, algebraic fractions with conditions of existence, radicals | 4 h | 1–2 | Timed self-test |
| 1: Goniometry | The unit circle, special values, associated angles, addition and duplication formulas | 10 h | 3–7 | Goniometry class test (end of October) |
| 2: Goniometric equations | Elementary and reducible equations, elementary inequalities, timed practice tests | 6 h | 8–10 | Final practice test |
Twenty hours in all, two one-hour lessons a week. Deliberately left out: triangle trigonometry, logarithms, solid geometry. In Year 4 these come later in the syllabus, and studying them now would take hours away from exactly the weeks before the goniometry test.
For the final practice test of Block 2, the site already has a ready-made goniometry quiz: the same topics (special angles, identities and formulas), with no penalty for wrong answers, useful as a last check before the real test.
The typical week
The two hours of lessons are a small fraction of the week in minutes: out of , about 1%. The plan is won or lost in the rest:
| Day | Activity | Minutes |
|---|---|---|
| Monday | Spaced review: redo an exercise you have already done, without looking at the solution | 20 |
| Tuesday | Lesson | 60 |
| Wednesday | Exercises set in the lesson | 20 |
| Thursday | Spaced review | 20 |
| Friday | Lesson | 60 |
| Saturday | Exercises set in the lesson | 20 |
| Sunday | Free, except in the week when a block ends: then it is the day of the self-test | — |
The twenty minutes on the days without a lesson are not theory to reread. They are an exercise you have already done, to redo: the one that falls due that day according to the review calendar.
Scheduled review: 1, 3, 7 days
You go back over the same topic 1 day, 3 days and 7 days after you first meet it. Not earlier, because earlier you still remember it; not later, because by then the brain has already let it go. “Going back over it” has a precise meaning: redo an exercise you have already done without looking at the solution, with a stopwatch in front of you. It does not mean rereading your notes.
Take the addition formula for cosine, for example. The first meeting is the lesson in which you learn it with the tutor. The next day you redo the same exercise on your own. On the third day, a similar exercise with different numbers. On the seventh, a mixed exercise, together with other topics from the block.
The end-of-block self-test
Before starting goniometry, the student in the example does a self-test on his own, stopwatch in hand, on the exact content of Block 0. It is not a class test: it is a way of finding the holes before the teacher does.
An isolated calculation error in a single exercise does not send you back: you correct it and start the next block anyway. An error that repeats across several exercises of the same type, such as always forgetting the conditions of existence, or always getting the direction wrong when multiplying by a negative, is a hole in the block, and that has to be closed before going on, even at the cost of a few extra days.
This is not the plan for the maturità
This is the method for building a catch-up or revision block during the year. If your problem is instead organising the whole of the final year (exam deadlines, credit, the decree on subjects), that is a different plan, with its own logistics. I wrote about it in Year 5: the plan for the maturità from September, where the maturità is Italy’s school-leaving exam. The working method, with its full logic, is on the page dedicated to the method; if you want to see the same structure applied to your own starting point, you will find it set up for the admission test on the study plan page.
Inside each block, the timed part is trained with the routine for practising against the clock. The daily habits that keep the plan standing are in studying maths without stress, and the mistakes that come back in the self-test are almost always among the five maths mistakes that look right. If the block is meant to clear a failed subject, the weeks are laid out in catching up on a failed maths grade; and if you find comments on a test that you cannot decipher, the teacher’s translations translate them.
If you would like me to prepare a block like this on your own topic in maths, write to me: we will look together at where you are stuck and how many hours it really takes.
