How can I make revision next year better than this year?

“How can I make revision next year better than this year?”  is a question that I find myself asking this time every year.  Every year we try something different or more accurately a slight evolution of what we have done before in the hope that we’ll finally find the magic formula for revision that will revolutionise our exam results.  Undoubtedly the changes that we make will make a difference, but I always find myself disappointed that it never seems to make more of a deference.

If I think about how revision has changed over the last 10 years, it is virtually unrecognisable now to how it used to be.  10 years ago, revision was still sending students on study leave, and hoping that they might actually do some revision.  At the time, no one really did anything about teaching students how to revise and I was still very much a new teacher so couldn’t, or didn’t know what to do about it.  Luckily as the years have gone on this has been addressed to an extent. 

The first big step forward, but not one that many teachers appreciated at the time, was to do away with study leave.  At this point I’ll admit that this might not be the same everywhere, but in our situation we had to face the fact that once students walked out of the front gate, only to return for exams, the likelihood of them doing much revision was limited.  So, by getting rid of study leave provided more time to deliver the syllabus as well as being able to put together a proper revision programme that could be delivered during normally timetabled lessons.  This in turn presented it’s own set of problems.  The main problem was “how to keep students motivated and deliver a series of lessons that will actually make a difference to their overall grades?”  

“Why don’t students do better in exams?” was the question that I found myself asking when thinking about the previous problem.  I’m sure we’ve all come across students who seem to pretty much know the course when spoken to before the exam, however, when the results come in they don’t do as well as you previously thought they would.  So, the second big step forward was to use exam questions effectively during revision lessons to give students the tools they need to effectively answer questions during exams.  I’m sure we’ve all used past papers with students but I’ve never been sure with using a whole paper at a time with the students I’ve had.  It was a complete revolution when I started using exampro to pick out and use specific exam questions with students. 

There are a number of ways that exam questions can be used with students to help prepare them for what they will face in the exam hall.  Some of the things that I have found are effective over the years are:

• Giving students a few exam questions to do for homework every week so they build up their confidence over time.
• I often use exam questions, especially long answer questions, during lessons as AFL.  Not only does doing this allow you to see how students are doing, it helps them to develop their own exam technique, and understand where the marks are coming from.
• During revision sessions I’ve got students to work collaboratively to answer questions either as a class or in small groups that can then by reviewed and discussed so that students see where the marks are coming from.

The next stage in my journey of revision was the realisation that students need to be taught how to revise.  A key step towards this was to take on Year 11 as a whole, and as a school start putting on revision assemblies to explain different revision techniques and how they can be used in practice.  One of the first areas looked at is getting students to construct their own revision time tables to help structure their own revision.  This was critical as I think that often the assumption is made that just because we as teachers can organise our time, then students should be able to do the same.  As we all know this is not the case!  Some of the other revision techniques covered in these sessions where:

• Making flash cards
• Mind mapping
• Making summary notes
• Traffic lighting content to help with prioritisation
• Making question & answer cards

So, this takes us up to about 3 years ago, and by now things were starting to head in the right direction, however there was still a long way to go.  By now I could have been lured into a false sense of security, however, even though students had had lots of input in terms of how to revise, they still didn’t know where to start.  The next stage of my journey was to put together loads of examples of revision materials that they can make for themselves.  At the same time, I also started producing students lists of revision tasks that they can work through.

That almost takes us up to the present with just the exception on last year.  During the last year I made some significant changes to the way I got students to approach revision.  The first major change I made was to build on the time table that students were putting together by giving them lists of tasks that needed to be completed, taking 10-20 mins each, to coincide with their time tables.  To help students understand what each task, I produced task help cards which were put up on notice boards at the start of each week.  Due to the sets I had, I bit the bullet and faced the fact that many of them weren’t going to produce their own summary sheets or buy revision books, so I produced a range of sheets for them to stick into their own revision books.  It also became apparent that one of the newer ways that students are revising is to use youtube.  The biggest change I therefore made last year was to put together a series of revision videos to put on youtube.

So that brings us bang up to date, and yet again I’m starting to look forward to how I’m going to structure revision next year, and given the lessons I’ve learnt, I’m going to yet again be making a few changes.  As this year will be the first time the new reformed 1-9 GCSEs in Science will be going through, it seems like the ideal time to overhaul everything and create a cohesive programme of revision that will run throughout the year.  Below I’m going to outline what I intend on doing and some of the rationales given the lessons learnt, behind it.

I’ve started off with the new specification, and have built a series of daily revision tasks taking 10-20 mins each around it.  This will give Year 11 students 246 short revision tasks to work through.  This will amount to around an extra 61 hours of revision that students won’t realise that they are doing throughout the year.  At the start of each term students will be given a task sheet that they can stick into their revision books, which can be periodically checked to see if students are keeping up.

To help students complete these revision tasks, I’ve put together a series of task cards which outline the tasks and what students need to include.  The main difference with the way I’m going to be using these next year will be to work on how students can engage with them.  To this end I’ll be putting them out on the school’s twitter, face book and Instagram accounts.  As a school, we have also invested in showmyhomework which I’ll also be putting them on to help engage parents.

On that back of my success with youtube during the exam period last year, I intend taking it one step further next year.  The plan is for each revision task, there will be a corresponding help video on youtube that explains the task and outlines some of the key information students need to include.

Instead of giving students a series of summary sheets at the end of the year to help with last min, I’ll be giving them then throughout the year, building them into weekly revision sessions. While we’re on the subject of revision sessions, I’ll be basing them on the revision tasks that students should have worked through.

One of the main issues that I’ve come across is how to make students value & then use the revision materials they put together.  I’ve found myself thinking back to making pop up books when I went to school a long time ago, and remembering how engaging it was.  So, when looking online I discovered the concept of interactive notebooks which I’ll be getting students to put together throughout the year as part of their revision.

The final big change that I’ll be making next year is the way I’m going to use exam questions.  The plan is to periodically give students short 30 min mock exams based on the revision tasks they should have completed during that phase of revision.  The main reason behind this is twofold.  The first reason is to act as AFL to ensure students are working through the revision tasks they have been set.  The second and more important reason is to help students develop their own exam technique throughout the year.

I hope that these ideas are different for many others out there and they have provided some inspiration for things you can do within your own lessons and in your revision sessions.

You can follow me on twitter @teacherchalky1 or on Facebook @teachlikeahero. 

Thanks for reading

D Chalk