Guide
Preparing for a school assessment task, not just the exam
Add a SAC, IA or assessment task with its date and scope, and you get a plan built from revision packs for each point — notes, a diagram to redraw, cards and a closed-book quiz — never past exam questions.
6 min read
Everything else in the app works toward one date per subject: the external exam, covering the whole course, practised on past papers. A school-set task is different. It has its own date, usually weeks away; it covers one or two areas rather than everything; your school writes it, so no past paper previews it; and it comes with a type and conditions your teacher has told you. Assessment task prep lets you tell the app about that task. Each point in its scope then gets a revision pack — a note keyed to the command verb, a diagram to redraw from memory, flashcards and a short quiz — and a plan page tells you what to do today and how secure each point is. In Victoria the app calls this a SAC, in Queensland an internal assessment (IA1, IA2, IA3), and elsewhere an assessment task — the words change with your state, the feature does not.
Adding a task
- Open the subject, go to its School tasks tab, and use the add button. It takes three steps.
- Details: a name, the date, and its weighting if you know it. A row of typical shapes for your subject can pre-fill the type and conditions — they are typical, not your school's actual task, so change anything that doesn't match what your teacher set.
- Scope: tick the areas your teacher named. Every knowledge point in those areas goes into your plan, so confirm the scope with them if you are unsure. You can narrow further to individual points if the task is only part of an area.
- Conditions and confidence: open or closed book, tech-free or tech-active, how long it runs — and a quick shaky / getting there / confident rating for each area. That rating sets how deep the plan goes for each point; once you have quiz results, they take over.
- Then the quick check: one or two low-rung pack questions from each area, answered on the ordinary quiz page so they count as evidence. When every item is marked, the card sets the result beside your rating and offers to use it instead.
The plan page, top to bottom
- The countdown and the task's conditions, with the tutor a tap away for any point in scope.
- Do these three today: three numbered actions with ticks that hold until tomorrow. In the last days the card switches to “Consolidate — nothing new”, and the night before to “One warm-up, then stop”. Within two weeks of the task the same three actions also appear on Today, above your daily session.
- The mastery strip and one row per point in scope: its status, what to do next, and how many new questions are waiting. Tap a status to see the evidence behind it.
- Sit a practice version: a free timed sit assembled from pack questions in the shape of your task, or an AI-generated practice assessment (credits shown first).
- The wrong-answer notebook: every pack question you last got wrong, with the reason pattern behind your misses. “Retry all, closed book” queues the lot.
What happens as the date approaches
Your side and the app's side, week by week.
| When | You | The app |
|---|---|---|
| Three to four weeks out | Add the task and rate the areas. | Your plan page lists every point in scope with what to do: read the note, redraw the diagram, start the cards, then a closed-book quiz two days later. Cards and quiz items in scope are scheduled toward the task date. |
| Two to three weeks | Do the three things the plan names each day and mark honestly. | Each point's status moves from Not assessed through Emerging and Developing to Secure (independent, closed-book, on more than one day) and on to Transfer-ready (an unfamiliar, higher-order question that stuck) as evidence comes in — never from one right answer. Tap a status to see the evidence behind it and how it moved since last week. |
| One to two weeks | Sit a practice version under the task's conditions. | The practice sit is assembled from pack questions in the shape of your task. Misses go into your error log and come back for relearning on their own schedule. |
| The final three days | Consolidate. Don't start new material. | Countdown mode: only points you have already met — retry what you missed, clear the due cards, redraw what you have seen. Your daily session's weak tier draws from pack questions for this task, not past papers. |
| Afterwards | Mark it done, and enter your result if you like. | The task drops out of scheduling and your revision widens back to the whole subject and the exam. |
Revision packs, not past papers
- Every point in your scope gets a revision pack once it is published: a note keyed to the command verb (what the verb wants, the content, what to watch for), a diagram you redraw from memory, flashcards, and a short quiz marked one line per mark.
- The note is an activity, not a page to skim. Each section carries a cue question: on a second visit the body hides behind the cue until you have answered it in your head, and Got it / Partly / Missed chips record how it went. Some packs add a spot-the-error card, a stepped worked example that fades out, and retrieve-first cards.
- Redraw replaces the diagram's labels with numbers and gives you a word bank of the labels to fill them from, in any order where the order doesn't matter. Stuck? The hint ladder reveals one label at a time, then the key.
- Past external-exam questions are never used for a school task. Your school writes its own task; the packs practise the knowledge in the task's shape instead. Past papers stay where they belong — exam revision.
- Your traffic-light rating sets the depth: shaky gets the whole chain, getting there starts with the one-paragraph note, confident starts with the quiz and only backs up if you miss.
- Points without a pack yet say so on the plan. Packs are published point by point; until then you can still ask the tutor, use your own cards and do a brain dump.
Practice assessments and extra questions from AI
- Every plan can assemble a practice sit from the pack questions in scope, free, in the shape of your task — a data test gets data-reading items, an extended response gets one substantial prompt per point.
- You can also ask AI to generate a practice assessment with solutions and a marking guide. It uses AI credits (the cost is shown before you confirm), it is written from your syllabus and the pack notes — never past papers — and only you can see it.
- You may add what your teacher gave you to prepare with — a task sheet, stimulus, criteria or class notes, pasted or photographed. It shapes the questions once and is not stored or shared. Don't add the actual task if it is confidential, other students' work or an answer key.
- "More questions" on any point, across the task, or "more like the ones I missed" after a quiz adds private AI questions to that point's Quiz. The point's row shows how many are new, with a link to do just those. They count as evidence like any pack question. The row's button changes with the point: after a miss it offers more like that one, and on a Secure point it offers harder questions to show transfer. AI can be wrong: mark against the solution with your syllabus in mind, and report anything that looks off.
Watch out for
- Note reads and redraws are remembered on the device you did them on; quiz attempts and card reviews follow you everywhere.
- If two tasks in the same subject overlap, the sooner one steers your revision. The other takes over once the first is done.
- A task whose date has passed but that you haven't marked done stops steering anything — it is simply ignored until you tick it off.
- The countdown chip on Today names what it is counting to. If it says a task title rather than "exam", that is the nearer date.