For people who worked hard at school - what did you do?

[Hthwo]

I coasted in a major way, and underachieved. Basically all the way through to my final year at university.

DD1 is much more conscientious - does her homework for a start, and wants to be a good student. However she is still coasting a bit, doesn’t revise for tests etc. She is starting year 10 and says herself she doesn’t really know how to step it up for GCSEs. I don’t know how to help her - not sure if the school will spend much time on the topic.

Any advice?

I read CGP revision guides and memorised everything in them. Came out with all A and A*. They are brilliant.

I have sensory processing issues so don’t really learn in a classroom setting as I have to see stuff written down for it to go in. I was also a school refuser because of mental health. I just went every day and read a page, closed the book and regurgitated the page in bullet points, then onto the next page!

When you say coasting is she consistently getting high marks without revising or just passing? Has she been taught study skills? If she's pre-GCSE then I wouldn't pile the pressure on or make a big thing about it, but maybe there are things she would enjoy doing herself to learn more about things she's interested in. Maybe something completely different, e.g. sport would give her another outlet.

I didn't find GCSEs particularly challenging, but I was motivated to do well and was in a set with other students of similar abilities so there was an element of competition which I enjoyed.

I agree with this, get her all the revision guides.

Yes she gets high marks, not been taught study skills as far as I’m aware. She is fairly competitive with her peers, but hasn’t yet made the connection of putting the work in to ‘beat’ them, just gets disappointed if she doesn’t.

Starting year 10 is a bit soon to know this stuff IMO. Revision guides nearer the time, go through her class notes and summarise them, get someone to test her, do all the practice questions / past papers she can get. But at the start of year 10 she hasn't yet learned much GCSE stuff to revise! And the teachers should go over study skills at some point.

I don’t particularly want to pile the pressure on, I just think now is the time to learn how to do the work, before the pressure comes in later.

I honestly think you're a bit premature with this. She's not even started Y10 yet. Let her get started and see how she gets on before worrying.

I was like you OP, coasted all the way. But somehow DD1 has an errant gene that makes her a very hard worker.
Once watching Gogglebox with DD2 there was discussion of the minimum wage and the young women on gogglebox said "huh, minimum wage means minimum effort from me" and DD2 and I laughed but DD1 said (very primly) "I'd never do that. I always do my best because otherwise you are wasting your time".
And she does always do her best and career wise that is massively paying off. I guess it's a mindset.

But one thing I can say from her school days, as GCSEs and A levels came around - she had a peer group whose tag was "Books before Boys". They had observed that those with boyfriends didn't get as good results and so didn't waste their time on boys. And this was true of the results she and her peers produced. She did have friends who had boyfriends of course. But the ones who concentrated on their work did best. Which isn't to say she didn't have any social life at all , she did, she had a good group of friends and did have fun times too.
She also had a part time job at the local pub, working hard there and getting lots of tips and occasional employee of the month prizes as a result. It was a great job, it's a popular busy pub and her last summer before going to uni she more or less handed her job to DD2 who was very shy and unconfident so it was great as she never had an interview or trial shift, she just joined the team and got trained by her sister which was a great confidence boost for her.

She's very strict on time management - if I would be ten minutes late for school pick up she'd berate me, "you've wasted ten minutes of my time that I could have been doing my homework". Always had revision timetables and stuck to them. Never wastes hours on the internet like I do.

So no boys and strict time management are key. That's my advice.

Regarding revision, it's important that she finds a style that suits her. I really struggled until I worked out this pattern.

1. Read through my notes and condense them to a small number of basic facts.
2. Record those facts (I'm old so it was a cassette recorder and Walkman for me!)
3. Walk around or sit outside listening to those facts on repeat.
4. Get hold of as many sample questions as possible.
5. Make rough plans of how I would answer those questions introduction-points in favour-points against-my opinion-conclusion.

The important thing is for her to think about her learning style, movement, colour coding, highlighters, breaking work up into small chunks, changing the subject every hour, creating silly poems to help remember things, making picture scrap boards.

There's no one right way to do it she needs to find her style.

I was very much a crammer. It did help me before exams. She need to learn the art of cramming.

I didn’t know how to revise. School didn’t really tell us how so I read through things but it didn’t go in so I gave up. I got ok grades but I could have achieved As easily if I’d tried.

Doing my degree was when I learnt about note taking and then condensing the notes and trying to fit it on one page, that sort of thing. I got a 2.1 for my degree.

Maybe explain note taking and then rewriting the notes onto one page. Buy her some coloured pens for doing it and some highlighters.

The key with revision is making sure you’re actually learning.

It sounds silly, but it’s easy to spend hours writing notes, checklists, revision posters. But all of that is pointless unless you’re actually memorising the stuff!

Agree with a previous poster about the revision guides. Read them, write out what you’ve read, repeat until you can do it without missing anything.

That coupled with all the practice papers. Revision should be very tiring on the brain.

The other part that makes it easier is understanding the material at the time it’s taught - a lot easier than trying to learn everything from scratch just before the exams.

I also agree with getting revsion guides. She could get past papers and do them - either slowly and carefully, to discover gaps in her knowledge, and also as timed exercises to get used to completing the work on time.

Another thing that's really helpful is to get her to explain a topic to you. You then ask questions and if she doesn't know the answers, she finds out and then explains again. It can be a bit time consuming but it's a great way for her to find out if she actually knows something or just recognises it when she sees the info given to her. This is good for history, geography, RS and sciences.

For humanities, nothing beats doing times essays and learning how to form a clearly constructed paragraph and how to answer the question.

Same as @Jifmicroliquid I had no idea how to revise. I just read through notes in the days before the exams but never did any additional reading other than some revision guides. I got an A and the rest Bs on minimal effort but I could have got more As if I'd actually tried. My parents never engaged with any of it, just asked if I was revising.

Did the same at A levels and for my first degree, until the final year when I learned how to write an essay properly (had never been taught that at school). Came out with a 2:1 but only because I worked my arse off in the final year.

I had, and still have, the attention span of a gnat when it comes to this sort of thing. If someone had worked with me to create a timetable, set milestones etc, that would definitely have helped. I had no idea of the scale of the task so ended up cramming. Reading around the subject or looking for real world examples/context would have really helped.

See, this is what I want her to avoid 😂

No cramming, just steady effort through the year. Not even really about revising for tests/exams, more how to get into the mindset of seeing the benefit of putting the effort in with her homework day in day out.

Lots of good revision advice on here. Others have described what worked for me, regarding condensing notes, but different things work for different people. Your DD is conscientious about doing her homework, and that is a brilliant start. By this stage, homework should consolidate and possibly extend learning, so is like early and continuous revision. Getting into the habit of spending that time on schoolwork will make the transition from homework time to revision time smoother. Also bear in mind that downtime and sleep are incredibly important for allowing memories and connections to be set down in the brain, and for managing stress.

I fell in with a good crowd and we'd go to each others houses for revision days. There'd be snacks, we'd test each other, have a bit of music on as we read.

ime, the school will expend huge amounts of time & effort trying to teach the kids how to revise. Whether any of it clicks, another story.

You can help (unique role!) by helping her find reasons to be motivated. Would she like prestige, good pay, economic security, intellectual stimulation, peer-admiration, to make the world a better place or ... ? Help her understand how to find her own priorities, get her to decide what matters to her (and for the right reasons). When she knows what kind of future she wants, she'll find her own ways to revise best.

Not saying don't work hard but last minute cramming has its place and is a good skill.

DD's did this too
They are excellent

Fair enough. I can help her with that for sure - I know all about cramming 😂

This is brilliant advice. I'll be saving this for my DC... such a massive coaster atm.
As was I. The revision skills were never taught to me so I really hope that the school will be teaching them too.

I like this

I think there are two aspects - revising the work (and making sure she really understands it) - this is going to look different for different subjects, ie how you revise for Spanish and Chemistry will be very different.

But secondly, and probably even more important, is exam technique. Reading the question, working out where you are going to gain marks, and making sure you tick those boxes. Past papers and practice questions. Looking at the markscheme to see where you could have improved your answers.

And this