I revised mm, honestly, I did loads.

I do agree with OP. Especially for subject like math, science etc.

After teacher teaching the children in the classroom, then there is a process that children will understand the knowledge, then practice to make sure they can apply it. This is supposed to be finished at the classroom. However, everyone is different, there will be children that grasp it immediately, there are children won't get it, but will after some practice, but there are children who take much longer time to do that. Time is tight in classroom, so here comes the homework, children apply what they have learned by doing the homework and they will know they didn't grasp it if they can't do it. For children who need help at this stage, if source is available, like some parents are able to provide help, then the children will master it and move on. But for children who don't have this help, they will build up gaps in their knowledge. That would led to the never catch up bad circle. If teacher identify the problem by marking the home work, and provide the needed support, these children might catch up. The trouble is , school might not have enough resource to help this. And also,there is often an anti homework, anti test attitude in some parents. That led to the situation that some state schools don't have unit tests, some event don't have end of term test, who knows who don't mastered.

If source is available, homework club for identified students will certainly improve some children's learning outcome.

At DS1's college, they operate lunch time club, teacher and a few high achieving students answer questions, anyone can come to ask what they don't understand. It provide quite popular.

I think the OP views this as a 3 step process: 1) be taught something, (and make sure you understand it?) 2) learn it so you do 'know' it, even if you then forget
3) revise it - ie refresh your memory and brush up on the details

Oh ok. For me, the 2nd step doesn't really feature. The 'learning/knowing' it would have happened at the end of step 1. I might then forget some of it, but learning it at step two, only to forget it again and have to re-revise it later wouldn't make sense to me!
The exception for me would be MFL (my own subject), which is more of a holistic learning process, where you need to be using a lot of the vocab and grammar all of the time, not just for the particular topic you're on.

Everyone works differently though. Lots of people (including me) absolutely can't be doing with things like mind maps, but others love them!

Redsky - if you find anything let me know ...:) I was a v poor student and did no revision -but luckily could regurgitate enough for O levels (am old) DH v v academic and organised mind hower DS is dyspraxic and we and he still cant work out how to learn...
He tried Seneca but didnt seem to work on answering longer questions... he is ok on slowly accumulating info (slow processing) just not answering questions!

I don’t know whether it’s a case of not getting it. Borrowing from ks1 experience here, but it might still apply, some children need much more practice than others to get info into their long term memory. Some will only need to see a letter/word/number bond once or twice and others will need to see it hundreds. Most will fall somewhere in between.

I wonder whether it’s more a case of children in the middle/bottom of that scale looking at the top and seeing how little practice they need to be able to ‘get it’ and thinking the problem is the technique.

I doubt it helps that in a lot of cases this work has to be done on top of what the school are also setting for homework.

I would think that it is the same principle as revising for spelling tests or learning times tables. Some kids are in denial that they have to do lots of repetition to learn, so I guess parents just have to encourage them and show them that it is worth doing. For example - showing them that if they do this for small tests during term time, they end up performing better than if they do not.

It is hard to put in lots of effort, but evidence that it is effective is a great motivator (also removing leisure activities until work is done).

I'm interested to know if anyone had identified a way to work out what sort of revision techniques work best for an individual? (Is there an online test???) DS clearly learns in an entirely different way to me, so everything I suggest he tries to help him revise doesn't seem to work, but we've not really yet worked out what does work, and DS's approach of try something, fail to retain anything, give up, is clearly not a winner long term.

That would be much more helpful Rafals

Is part of the issue sifting through the vast amount of revision material and resources available. DCs school provide online KOs, revision sheets, quizzes, subscribed online revision apps, in addition to their own class work books and example questions, then there's flash cards,revision books such as CGP and whatever else is available online such as past papers and tutorials on YouTube.

Previously it was a textbook, your own class notes and perhaps some past papers. I just can't help thinking that in some ways this was more straightforward.

That doesn’t sound quite right, but these things tend to get borrowed and get changed so they aren’t being used for the purpose they were originally intended for.

pragmaticreform.wordpress.com/2015/03/28/knowledge-organisers/

classteaching.wordpress.com/2018/09/14/using-knowledge-organisers-to-improve-retrieval-practice/

There are a couple of examples here.

Used in the right way, the concept behind them fits in quite nicely with the point the OP is making. I’m not surprised that pupils might struggle to make one themselves.

So the teacher is supposed to provide the summary?

Ds has an expertise book with the title Knowledge Organiser. He had homework that was summarise x topic in your Knowledge Organiser.

He couldn’t do it.

I’m not sure KOs are supposed to be blank!

They’re basically an A4 summary of the main ideas, people or vocabulary in a topic. They’re often presented in a way that makes it easy for pupils to test themselves by covering part of the page.

It’s probably not all that different from making a set of flash cards except in this case it’s provided by the school at this start of a topic.

Do kids make notes in class any more? Ds's work seems to be mostly answers to questions in his excercise book or typed as he uses a laptop (without the original question so reading back you don't know what they are, or scraps of photocopied paper. He is terrible at organisation though.

I think the OP views this as a 3 step process:

1. be taught something, (and make sure you understand it?)
2. learn it so you do 'know' it, even if you then forget
3. revise it - ie refresh your memory and brush up on the details

Mainly most people when they say 'revise' mean 2&3 combined.
But maybe students don't realise there is a difference between 'learning' and refreshing.

I've been a (successful) teacher for decades and always performed very well in exams myself, and I don't quite understand quite what you're getting at, OP.
What do you mean by 'not having learned it in the first place'? Generally, students are taught topics, work on them in class and as homework, sometimes do tests or topic assessments, then move onto other topics and eventually revise all the topics for their final exams. I get that some students find things like mind maps more useful than just reading through their notes or doing practice questions, but it sounds like you think there's a whole other stage of the learning process that they are missing out? I revised by reading my notes, testing myself on vocab etc.

Ah, thanks.

It's a book/file for each subject in which they are supposed ( I think) to make notes/summarise key points for each topic studied to aid revision. But I might be wrong as ds's is blank despite it often being set as homework.

What is a 'Knowledge Organiser'?

Ds's Knowledge Organisers are completely blank!

Knowledge organisers, self-quizzing and retrieval practice seem to be becoming more popular at the moment so the general problem might sort itself out.

Unfortunately teen, ds also has mild PDA combined with his asd so will not usually accept any input from me.

comefrom I may have mentioned this before, but my DD1 has disorganized dyspraxia. I just ended up making all her revision cards myself and doing most revision 1-1 with her. Time consuming, far from ideal, but it worked (mainly).

Apart from music theory. He can learn all manner of advanced music theory unaided it appears!