Teach Them HOW To Revise

In the run up to exams students should be spending about as much time at home revising as they spend in school working. That time is valuable. It adds up so much that it is worth spending some of the time in school to ensure that students actually know how to revise so they don’t fall into any bad habits that waste their time.

Here are things we can do as teachers to ensure the time they are spending revising independently is as effective as possible.

1. Let them know that ACTIVELY revising is going to be far more effective than PASSIVELY revising. Passive revising includes things like reading, highlighting, copying… and is not a great use of their time. Think of an analogy of working out at the gym; if their head isn’t hurting at the end of revision session, they aren’t doing it right.

2. Don’t overload students with resources. Giving them too much at once is not a kindness. This can be overwhelming and less work can end up being done compared to if a smaller, more accessible task was handed out. Keeping revision simple, one online resource, one workbook, one paper at a time can help.

3. Give students model answers instead of mark schemes. Mark schemes are hard to read and interpret. As a department, creating model answer papers with hints or links to online resources (example below uses Sparx codes), will be of much more use than a hard to read mark scheme.

4. Teach students HOW to use a past paper, these are a precious resource and using them well is hard. Make sure they know that simply DOING a past paper is of little benefit if they don’t reflect on their strengths, learn from their mistakes, and act accordingly.

5. Teach students what good and bad revision looks like.

6. Remind students of the importance of sleeping, eating and creating a focused environment. This is all just as important as the task itself.

Any more to add? Please comment below.

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