What is the best way to revise for GCSE exams?
Seems like the most obvious of answers, right? Or that’s what I thought.
When I took my exams, I revised by reading over my notes, making a few extra notes by condensing those lengthy notes down into something more readable (and minus the inane doodling) et voila.
Well it turns out I was wrong. Very very wrong.
There is a much better way to revise and when I learned all this it was like a revelation.
How amazing would *I* have been had I known all of this? I guess we’ll never know, but my 16-year-old son who is currently revising for his GCSE’s is going to get all that benefit!
Because here’s the thing; the big thing. It’s much better to know the subject, than just try to remember by rote.
And how do I know all of this?
We were given a very detailed talking to by our son’s school to begin with which opened my eyes. Then I waded into the minefield that is the internet and here is all that information distilled down into 7 easy to read, easy to take on board steps.
- What do you need to study?
Make a list of all the subjects you want to study AND what topics within that subject you want to study.
Studying everything over the past few years is just going to feel overwhelming, so go through the topics you’ve covered throughout Year 9, 10 and 11 (teachers should be able to provide these) and highlight the ones you’re really not confident with, those you’re OK with and those you know well. It’s time consuming but really important.
- Create a timetable:
Seems obvious, but few people do it and even fewer do it properly.
One of the biggest obstacles I’ve found for Dan is that he sits down and ponders and faffs for a good 10 minutes before actually starting anything. If you’ve allocated yourself an hour for a topic, that’s a big chunk out of it when you’ve achieved exactly zero.
A timetable is a great way to structure revision but also once you’re in the flow, to actually see what you’ve achieved.
So your timetable needs to show:
* Days of the week and then break this down into times during the day (we did 8am to 7pm) Now in those slots add everything you know you will be doing other than studying; so school, sport, visiting friends, job, the Easter break, family commitments etc. It is really important to include downtime and ‘me’ time in here too.
* In the time slots left now add: what subject you want to study and what topic (from the ones you’ve identified). So for example: Chemistry (Atomic Structures) or French (tenses).
* Now add HOW you’re going to revise it or what sort of revision technique you’re going to use. See below for more on this!
* Make sure you plan in regular breaks for food, watching TV for half an hour, playing sport, walking the dog, or, like my son, a quick catch up on the Xbox! Resting and sport are proven to improve exam success.
* Now plan in evenings to read. Read anything; a book, magazine, read over the revision you did the day before, a newspaper. Reading a variety of text is going to help with all the writing and will most definitely help with English exams as you’re learning new vocabulary, sentence structure, styles of writing etc.
Here’s a really quick win: every time you decide to read, take 5 random books from your bookshelf or the library – the more random the better and you don’t have to ‘like’ the book – and read the first page of each one. The variety, sentence structure, vocabulary, point of view and style will all be very different and as you’re only reading a page, it’s not a mountainous task. - What sort of revision?
Now this is a big one. THE big one. How are you supposed to remember everything you’ve been taught – right back to those boring early days when you really weren’t paying attention?
Well, you need to find your learning style. Is it visual, auditory, are you a night owl or a morning lark?
I’m going to go through some techniques at the end of this post but basically, if you use lots of different techniques revision isn’t going to feel like an endless chore of doing the same thing every day over and over and over and over and over (that’s how it felt to me!) - Check out your exam board
There is a LOT of information out there that is going to really really help with your revision. Number one will be past papers (we’ll come onto that next) but on top of that you can access the marking scheme which tells you how marks are allocated and what you need to include in your answer to gain those marks.
For example in a Chemistry question do you get a mark for showing your working out? Or in an English paper, what level of detail are they looking at in a comparative answer?
On top of this you can also see the examiners’ report – this is a roundup of all the things they’ve noticed from all the students who took the paper; the pitfalls they fell into, the silly mistakes, the things they were looking out for.
All really valuable intel. - Past papers
There is a reason this is number 5 on the list and not up there at 1 or 2. There is no point diving into past papers until you have the knowledge you need to answer the questions.
If you dive straight into them, look up where you went wrong and revise those areas, you will be missing out on whole swathes of work that could be in the exam you eventually sit.
But they are an essential tool in your revision belt, because you can learn all the topics covered in class until you’re blue in the face but if you can’t answer exam questions on them it will all be worthless.
Because here’s the thing with everything you learn in class – in an exam they’re not going to be asking you for basic recall of topics. They’re going to test you, test you understand how to use the knowledge you’ve gained. You need to understand how you’re going to be asked to show what you know, what is the exam format, the style used and what are the time pressures? And the only route to find all this out is lots and lots and lots of past papers! They’re really easy to find; just check out which exam board you’re sitting for each exam and Google is your friend. - A tip for the actual exam
The school told us that one of the biggest mistakes students make when taking an exam is not reading the question properly. They give beautiful and detailed answers but it doesn’t answer the question so they get marked with a big, fat zero.
It’s really easy to help avoid this by highlighting the ‘command’ word in the question – so compare, contrast, calculate etc. Literally highlight the word and ask yourself at the end, did I answer this question? - What sort of revision should I do?
So back to this question again. It is going to depend on the subject and on you, but essentially you need to engage in active revision not passive revision (which is essentially my old fashioned way of note taking or reading over notes). Active revision is more about using the information you’ve learned and organising it. It is much easier to read through a page of notes and think, “Yes, I know this”, than it is to cover up the page and to give a talk on the topic.
So, here are a few suggestions that we’ve been using:
- Mind Maps (for English literature to remember quotes or character traits or for History to remember timelines)
This is literally a pretty picture of the subject you’re studying. So write the subject matter in the centre of a large piece of paper – say MacBeth themes – and then write the themes around it in boxes or circles or whatever visual device you like. For themes of a similar nature, put them in the same colour boxes or point to them with the same colour arrows. The idea is you create a visual map of all your thoughts which will be easier to recall and visualise when you’re in an exam and faced with a question about that theme. - Flash Cards (for languages to remember vocabulary, for science to remember formula)
The important thing here is HOW to use flash cards. Write a question on one side and the answer on the other. Test yourself regularly and any you get wrong, look over again. - Flow Chart (to show timelines in history)
This is another visual way of learning and if you add colours to link ideas or pictures to show characters you are more likely to remember them in an exam (ah, I remember how I struggled to draw a soldier for the First World War revision) - Study Star (to group ideas together such as phrases in languages to do with holiday, or family life etc)
I found this Study Star on Pinterest and thought it was a great idea. We used it for French with one part of the star for words and phrases about ‘me’, one star for holidays, one for school etc. - Chat (pretty much any subject)
Explain a topic to someone else. Dan finds this method of learning really helpful as you really need to understand the subject matter to be able to talk to someone else about it. Talking also prompts the memory and sparks other ideas.
If you’ve got no one at hand to talk it through with, record yourself and then play it back at a later date and fill in gaps in knowledge. - Mnemonics (remembering science equations, sequence of chemicals in Chemistry)
These are great for remembering a sequence of things or a formula (even I used these back in the day!)
So for example to remember the first nine elements in the Periodic Table: Harry He Likes Beer But Cannot Obtain Food (Hydrogen, Helium, Lithium, Beryllium, Boron, Carbon, Nitrogen, Oxygen, Fluorine).
A final note:
Have you heard about The Curve of Forgetting?
No, me either. It describes how we retain or get rid of information that we take in and it’s based on a one-hour lesson. The main, and quite frankly obvious, point is this: if we don’t practise learning content regularly, we will forget it.
Day 1: at the beginning of the lesson, a pupil walks in knowing 0%. At the end of the lesson they know 100% of what they know (not necessarily 100% of what they were told!)
Day 2: if they have done nothing with the information they learned in that lesson (didn’t think about it, read it again, etc) they will have lost 50%-80% of what they learned.
Day 7: we remember even less, and by day 30, we retain about 2%-3% of the original hour! Which is why when a topic test comes around pupils swear they’ve never seen the information before in their life and end up having to re-learn it from scratch!
So how do you improve the curve? Reprocessing the same chunk of information sends a signal to the brain that helps it to hold onto that data. When you are exposed to the same information repeatedly, it takes less and less time to “activate” the information in your long term memory and it becomes easier for you to retrieve the information when you need it.
So 24 hours after getting the information, spend 10 minutes reviewing it and you can raise the curve almost to 100% again. A week later spend 5 minutes looking over it again. By day 30, your brain should only need a few minutes to review the information.
So there you have it.
I wish everyone going through any kind of revision the very best of luck – you’ve got this!
