How to Manage Your Time Answering Questions During the CPC Exam

The Certified Professional Coder (CPC) exam by the American Academy of Professional Coders (AAPC) is the most sought after medical coding certification in the professional coding community. The majority of people who pass the exam and got certified move on to better career and salary opportunities. Certified medical coders are in high demand as employers look for certification with 2 years experience.

Importance of time management

Manage

Which is why the CPC exam is no pushover. You're required to answer 150 multiple choice questions in a marathon 5 hours and 40 minutes. Without extra break time in between, you're left with only a little over 2 minutes to answer each question. There are plenty of horror stories of people not being able to answer all the questions in time. You're allowed to refer to your books and notes for answers so the issue is really about time. If you walk into the exam hall without a time management plan in place, you're only handicapping yourself.

How to Manage Your Time Answering Questions During the CPC Exam

Multiple passes strategy

The good news is that you can follow a tried and tested strategy to help you focus and pass the exam. Remember that each question are not equal. Some will be easier to answer than the rest. You can leverage on this little tip using a multiple passes strategy. Your goal would be to go through the exam 3 times. First pass you answer all the easy questions, second pass the medium difficulty questions, then the last pass the truly difficult ones.

Because they're all multiple choice answers, they actually carry the same weight even though the effort to answer them varies. A common mistake that students or exam takers make is to waste too much time on a difficult question at the beginning, thus depriving themselves of easier questions at the end.

Rate the questions according to difficulty

While you're going through the questions in the CPC exam booklet on your first pass, keep track of the question's difficulty with a simple mark. You can put for example, a dot next to questions that are of medium difficulty, and two dots next to really difficult questions. So on your second pass just focus on the single dot questions, and on your third pass the double dot questions. This will save you a lot of time on your second pass and third pass. There is no need to over think it, just go by your gut feeling so you don't end up spending too much time rating the questions.

Track your time and progress and keep moving

There are 150 questions you need to answer in 5 hours and 40 minutes. Your CPC exam answer grid have 5 columns containing 30 questions each. Allow yourself one hour for each column, which leaves some time at the end for review. You can request the proctor to announce as each hour elapses to remind yourself of progress. Don't be afraid to skip questions that may take a lot of time so that you can keep moving forward.

Don't leave any CPC exam questions unanswered

When the CPC exam time is almost up, use the last few minutes to guess at an answer for the unanswered questions. There are only 4 choices, which gives you a 25% chance of getting it right. Make an educated guess and you can bump up your chances to 50/50. Usually there will be one obvious wrong answer, so make sure you use all the remaining time to make educated guesses.

Practice and prepare

The best way to do well with these strategies is to practice. The experience of taking the CPC exam is very different from doing it in your home or participating in online sample exams. The atmosphere is different and there could be distractions and discomfort. Make sure you have suitable clothing to stay comfortable, eat to get your energy levels up, and get plenty of rest the day before. You'll want your mind to perform at its optimum throughout the whole duration of the CPC exam. With a proven strategy and prepared mind, there is nothing to stop you from passing the exam and get certified.

How to Manage Your Time Answering Questions During the CPC Exam

Jim regularly updates his website HowToStudyForCPCExam, about how to prepare and study for medical coding certification, medical coding in general, the certification exam, and related news about the industry. You'll find great tips and useful resources to help you get certified.

How to Handle Classroom Management During Transitions

Every quality lesson has students transitioning from one activity to another, or, as I like to say, from one mini-lesson to another.

Mini-lessons are a great way for teachers to address student attention span and teach their content without the students getting bored. And, if students are not bored, teachers will face less classroom management problems.

\"what Is Management\"

However, the transitions from one activity to another can also be the cause of many classroom management problems. If the transitions are unstructured, teachers can guarantee themselves an increase in classroom management issues.

Therefore, the best defense is a good offense - in other words, teachers need to make sure every transition in the classroom is structured.

Here are some simple, but effective classroom management tips for transitioning between mini-lessons... simply follow the steps below:

1. Signal

Teachers must have some type of signal to bring student momentum to a halt. In my experience nothing works better than a simple egg timer. On the very first day of school I teach my students that when that timer "beeps" that is their signal to stop what they are doing and listen for the next set of directions.

2. Be Specific With Directions

The fact is students' cannot read a teacher's mind. Therefore, the more specific a teacher is with the directions the better it is for everyone.

Let's look at an example where a teacher is transitioning from an activity that involved the students completing a worksheet to an activity that involves reading from the text book. There is a big difference between, "Put the worksheets away and open up your text book to page 323" and "You have 1 minute and 30 seconds to put the worksheets in your folder and open your textbook to page 323 without talking...when the timer beeps stop what you are doing and listen for the next set of directions."

See the difference?

If you want to take it a step further, it would be a good idea for the teacher to then write the textbook page on the board.

3. Check-for-Understanding

As with any set of directions teachers need to "check" to see if their students actually know what to do. Teachers should simply call on students at random to repeat the directions. "Johnny, what are you going to? Sarah, how much time do you have?" etc.

4. Model

Depending on the complexity of the transition teachers may need to actually model the procedure. For example, if students need to move into new groups then the teacher may want to demonstrate how he expects this to happen. Remember, students' cannot read the teacher's mind.

However, modeling can also be used for simple tasks such as putting the caps back on the markers and putting the markers away in their proper place in the classroom. Again, if you want it done, you must teach it.

5. "Go!"

After completing the above steps the teacher simply sets the timer and says "Go!"

Having a few different activities within a single lesson is essential to being an effective teacher. However, the transitions can also be the cause of many classroom management problems. By following the above steps teachers can transition from activity to activity without any classroom management problems.

How to Handle Classroom Management During Transitions

Eliminate classroom management problems forever! Discover the simple strategies in Adam Waxler’s FREE 5-part Classroom Management e-Course @ http://www.Classroom-Management-Tips.com

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