You shouldn't treat French revision how you treat Biology revision
How to take your revision to the next level
This is a tricky one for me,
As I usually advocate for keeping things simple.
The hardest part about revising is usually getting started,
And therefore, we want to simplify as many things as possible to make the prospect of starting less daunting.
However,
If we assume for a second that we are revising,
There are a few things that we should be thinking about to optimise our time and energy.
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Ladder of importance
When I build revision plans with students,
I explain our ladder of importance idea.
In short,
The idea is that certain subjects take more time than others to improve.
For example,
Typically (being the key word),
It is going to take comparatively more time to improve in Biology than Food Tech.
This absolutely does not mean Biology is inherently more important than Food Tech,
It just may take more effort.
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Building on from this idea,
It doesn’t seem logical that every subject is best revised in the same way.
Every session shouldn’t be 1 hour at your desk doing a past paper or making notes – for example.
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Options
Unfortunately,
I cannot tell you exactly how you personally should be revising for each subject,
But I can start to give you some ideas.
For example,
If I was spending a revision session making notes,
Then I might have a longer session as this may well be less mentally taxing,
Compared to if I was writing an essay or doing a past paper.
The latter should likely take more focus and energy and thus the session itself may be best served as being shorter.
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Furthermore,
After doing certain subjects that you find particularly mentally taxing,
For me this likely would have been physics and chemistry,
You will likely need a longer break before revising again compared to if you revised a subject, you perhaps enjoy more and find less difficult,
For me this would have been maths.
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Memorisation
To make matters a tad more complicated,
I always advocate for memorisation to happen outside of the timetable.
Long term memory research substantiates that the best type of memorisation is short, regular bursts,
Rather than long drawn out practice less regularly.
Thus, we want to be planning regular 5-10 minute quick revisions rather than allocating 45 minutes or an hour where you ‘go over your notes.’
I am seeing students ‘go over their notes’ and calling it revision far too regularly.
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However,
The problem with this advice is that by not scheduling memorisation as part of the timetable,
It may not happen.
So, for some students,
They would be better off scheduling a handful of short memory bursts into each day of their timetable.
There will likely be less on school days and more on weekends/holidays.
However, the principle of different sessions for different tasks remains the same,
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The point of this newsletter is to help student optimise their time.
It is illogical to think that all subjects and all types of revision are equal.
All too often students are treating them in the same way and therefore they are either neglecting the hard sessions, or they are getting sub-optimal results.
By considering different length sessions,
Breaks,
Times in the day,
Which sessions you do on the same day,
And so on,
A student will not only improve their results,
They will also hopefully improve their motivation to revise.
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I hope you all have a great week ahead,
Best,
Joel