Supporting Revision

Striving for Success

Your Role?�

Supportive & Challenging

• Cheerleader
• Counsellor
• Coach
• Project Manager
• Supplies Co-ordinator
• Motivator
• Guidance & Reference Point

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WHEN

How much time do you actually have?

• Consider commitments and day to day activities for an individual week.
• Utilise the space around it to plan their revision time
• Review weekly and make adjustments – revision allocation will increase
• Agree the balance between work and social life
• Be flexible – use the 80/20 rule. If your child is sticking to what they are supposed to be doing 80% of the time, they will be doing alright
• Place the timetable in a visible place or ensure it’s shared

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What makes a good revision plan?

A good revision plan should be:

• Realistic: Be careful not to set a plan you can’t stick to. Nobody can do 12 hours of revision a day.
• Achievable: Make your timetable achievable by allocating time to exercise, socialising and some time to forget about revision for a bit.
• Detailed: A good plan breaks revision into chunks, specifies times for studying and assigns each time to a subject or topic.
• Flexible: some topics are difficult and may take you longer than you planned. Don’t be afraid to adjust your plan accordingly.

WHEN

https://getrevising.co.uk/planner

The Get Revising Study Planner:

• Automatically schedules revision around your life
• Breaks your revision into manageable chunks
• Easy to change and update
• Accesses exam specifications

https://revisionworld.com/create-revision-timetable

Prioritise Your Subjects/Topics

Subjects:

The best way to do this is to make a list of all your subjects.

RAG the subjects in terms of those you’re doing well in and those you’re struggling in. Consider what your Projected grades currently look like – for example, if your Physics grade is rock bottom, you might want to prioritise it above a subject where you’re exceeding your target grade.

Your most recent report would be a good place to start.

Red – below target/really struggling Amber – close to/on target Green – on/exceeding target

WHAT

Break Subjects Into Topics

Look at the topics within each subject. Your subject teachers can point you in the right direction for this.

Alternatively, use some initiative, type the name of your exam board into a search engine and locate the exams you’re taking on their website. Every exam board creates a syllabus or specification which contains EVERYTHING YOU COULD POSSIBLY BE EXAMINED ON.

Apply the same process as you did with your subjects but now you’re going to RAG the topics in terms of those you are confident with and those you don’t understand.

Red – don’t understand/needs more work Amber – some understanding/ could do with revisiting Green – confident

WHAT

HOW Allocate 30 Minute Time Slots

• More chance of staying focused.
• Interleaved practice: cognitive psychologists believe that by varying what we study regularly stronger distinctions and memory associations will be formed between each set of information.
• It provides a time goal for each session so we are held more accountable to actually revising the topic when we’re at our desk, not day dreaming for some of the time and using the time we’ve studied for as the vanity metric for success which makes us think we know more than we do.
• Position challenging topics at a time in the day when you know you tend to work best in the day.
• Find a balance between topics you’re less familiar with and those which you think you’ll be able to get through quickly. This will keep a nice balance between revision being a challenge and you making good progress.
• Never give up your momentum. Don’t take a break just because your timetable said so. Keep working until you start to lose concentration and efficiency, then take a break. Especially when trying to understand difficult concepts, freeing up larger extended blocks of time can be the key to unlocking a breakthrough moment.
• Leave a few time slots blank towards the end of the day for some rapid reviews and testing.

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The Curve of Forgetting

HOW

Before revising a topic

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• Write down everything you can remember in a spider diagram or a bullet point list to sharpen your memory and to see which bits you’ve forgotten or struggle to recall.
• You can then focus your early revision on what you don’t know!
• Try to link ideas in your spider diagram to make connections e.g. when revising Macbeth try to link quotations from each character that reveal something about key themes such as ambition.

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HOW

Spread It Out & Mix It Up

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• Your memory works best when it is forced to mix up different subjects and topics within subjects�
• This will feel more difficult and it takes careful planning but it will be more effective.

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• Start with the areas of the course you are least confident on. �Each time you return to a subject quickly recap what you did last time before moving on. Use one of your testing methods when you revisit!�

HOW

Quizzing

• Good old fashioned quizzing is ideal, get self-testing.
• This is proven to be a great revision strategy.
• It helps focus your knowledge and start remembering.
• There are various types of quizzes, such as short answer quizzing, multiple choice or a mix of the two.
• Different question types suiting different purposes (Multiple choice, Describe, Explain, Extended answers).

• Hegarty Maths
• Seneca Learning
• Quizlet
• Google Classroom
• Corbett Maths (5 a day)
• BBC GCSE Bitesize

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HOW

Flashcards

1. READ WHAT YOU NEED TO LEARN

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Read the text carefully a few times, so you know how much you have to learn and what you have to learn.

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2. FIND AND MARK DEFINITIONS

Highlight the most important definitions, keywords and key phrases. These form the basics of your flashcards.

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3. WRITE YOUR FLASHCARDS

Write the definition or keyword on one side of the flashcard, and the meaning on the other side. Don’t forget: make it fun!

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HOW

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3. WRITE YOUR FLASHCARDS

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On one side of the flashcard, write the keyword or a question in large letters so it is easy to read.

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On the other side, write the key information. Use notes not full sentences.

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HOW

Mitosis and the cell cycle

• Cell division - called cell cycle
• genetic material - doubled & divided -2 identical cells.
• needs to grow and increase sub-cellular structures
• Mitosis - chromosomes pulled - nucleus divides.

Leitner System: Flashcards

Step 1:

To begin with, you’ll need to grab three-five boxes of any size. Then, you’ll want to place all of your flashcards into box number one.

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Hint: you probably don’t want to be mixing up history dates and figures with language vocab, that would be pretty jarring and inefficient learning! So add some dividers to your boxes for each subject, or (if you’ve got space), make a set of boxes per subject you want to review.

HOW

Leitner System: Flashcards

HOW

Leitner System: Flashcards

Step 2:

• Divide your boxes into handy subsections for review on different timelines. Here’s a great example to get you started (but you can – and should! – customise the intervals once you’ve got the hang of the Leitner system!):
• Box 1 – review daily
• Box 2 – review every other day, say: Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays
• Box 3 – review once per week, perhaps Saturdays
• Box 4 – review every other week
• Box 5 – review once a month and before your exam
• These timelines aren’t set in stone, so you can easily switch the intervals up to every three days, every five days, and so on. The key is finding the spacing period that works best for you, your topic, and your ability to recall information over time.

HOW

Leitner System: Flashcards

Step 3:

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• Start practicing your flashcards! Take note of whether you answer correctly or incorrectly.

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Step 4:

• Every time you get a question right, place the flashcard in the next box. Correct answers qualify your cards for review in increasingly spaced intervals, so over time they’ll gradually travel down the line and (hopefully!) end up in box 4 or 5!

HOW

Leitner System: Flashcards

Step 4:

If you’re on a day when you’ve got to tackle more than one box (Monday, for example!), I suggest starting with the higher box (so you don’t have a pile of correctly answered and upgraded flashcards to answer twice in one session)! Plus this will help you get the ball rolling with knowledge you’re secure in!

Step 5:

However, if you get a question wrong then that flashcard needs to return to the previous box (an interval you know you can answer correctly at). If you’re continually getting something wrong, it stays put in box 1.

HOW

Leitner System: Flashcards

HOW

So what’s the magic of the Leitner system?

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By continually reviewing information that just won’t stick, you can focus less on stuff you already know and instead allocate more time to the cards that are causing you the most trouble. Plus this focus will help you to build up confidence on the tricky topics!

After using the Leitner system for two weeks or so, you should have an interesting mix of cards across all of your boxes and a better understanding of how well you recall in the different intervals. 

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This is when the magic of this study technique will start to happen.

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Because once you know what your personal hurdles are, you can create a weekly, bi-weekly, or month-by-month schedule that will set you up for exam success. It is important, however,to figure out the recall intervals that work for YOU!

Testing: �

HOW

• Past papers – apply learning in timed conditions
• Quiz e.g. on Quizlet, Kahoot, Quizizz or in exam board revision guides.
• Look - Cover - Write – Check

Don’t… just re-read your book/textbook

HOW NOT TO REVISE

Don’t…just highlight everything!

• Cut out anything that may distract you.
• Put your phone in another room. (No Tablets/Games consoles etc. either)
• Create an environment where you can completely focus on the task of revising.
• If possible, sit at a table or desk rather than on your bed.
• Let your family know that you’re revising so they do not disturb you.

WHERE

Quiet - Clear - Permanent

Next Steps - Parents

1. Encourage your child to make a start.
2. Help them to create a quiet, clear and permanent revision space.
3. Talk to them about their ‘why’.
4. Provide resources.
5. Discuss your role.
6. Agree expectations.
7. Keep us updated.

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