Revision
5 lessons from whole school revision resources
The count down to exams is on. Revision will be on your mind.
The question you’ll be grappling with is:
how can I best help my students to remember as much of what I’ve taught them as possible?
To help you, we’ve pooled and analysed 5 resources, which your fellow members use in their schools, and have generously shared inside the Curriculum Thinkers Community
Here are 5 lessons we learned from them:
Understand the science of revision
Establish principles of effective revision
Teach them revision techniques
Help students plan their revision
Make it a whole school team effort
1. Understand and teach the science of revision.
To do well in exams students need to remember what they’ve been taught. To do that they need memory. Memory is only possible because of the brain.
So to help students to remember, it’s vital we understand how the brain and memory work. And by “we” I mean everyone - staff, students and parents.
Ed Turner (Deputy Headteacher, Thurstable) and his team have done everything they can to ensure they do.
They explain the model of memory, the principle of cognitive load theory and Ebbinghaus’ Forgetting Curve in their “Revision Ideas Booklet” - download it here.
2. Establish principles of effective revision.
Once you understand the evidence beneath revision, you can can begin to establish principles, which will guide staff and students through their revision journey.
Writing them down helps you crystallise what they are, gets everyone on the same page and provides a helpful reminder if things start to go awry.
West London Free School have 7 of them. Get them all here
3. Teach revision techniques.
Like any skill, revision needs to be taught. But with so many techniques to choose from, which ones should you teach and how might you do it.
MEA Central (Manchester) take a “less is more” approach. They choose just two techniques - Lietner System and Cornell Note-Taking - teach them explicitly and rigorously.
They teach staff first, then they teach students - in both form time and during lessons - and they they teach parents and carers. Download their training slides here.
4. Help students plan their revision.
“There’s not enough content in the curriculum”… said no one ever.
With so much to learn, starting revision early is key. But planning out a 5 to 6 month project is not an easy task.
Logic Studio School (Hounslow) provide a number of different frameworks in their “Revision Planner”:
year planner
week by week planner
subject by subject
subject specific breakdown with exam dates and specification checklists
5. Make it a whole school team effort.
The timetable - and it’s inflexibility - can be a huge source of frustration in schools. But it can also provide an amazing opportunity to make marginal gains as exam season unfolds
Mike Hoad (Vice Principal, Walton Academy) uses a spreadsheet with some pretty impressive macros, which helps him rearrange the year 11 timetable as exam season unfolds.
As students finish exams in their subjects, he allocates students to teachers in subjects where exams have not yet taken place. Thereby giving them as much time as possible to revise for every subject.
You can watch how it works here and download the sheet here
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