Revision during Yr 10 and 11 - techniques and tips??

[fuschia2000]

How much do you recommend of revision throughout years 10 and 11? For end of term tests / end of year exam / final gcse?

Do you have any top techniques or tips to recommend?

We're aiming for top grades here!

Thank you 🙂

Enough so that you understand & know the content & understand the question technique.
Not so much that you burn out.

Who’s “we”?

Is it a team effort

We're the support / back up team 🙂🙂🙂

I recommend finding out what method suits your teen. I spent a long time "encouraging" DS to make summary notes and cue cards. He doesn't learn like that - he was much better with online tools like Seneca and doing lots of questions. DD, on the other hand, produces gazillion cards all highlighted according to some complicated colour system and likes verbal question asking and repeating things to herself. She can't stand Seneca, GCSEpod etc.

I was a bit flippant before, but your teen really needs to try things out now in y10 to see what works.

e.g. I never had to revise maths before university (even for A levels). I was taught it once, practiced a bit for homework, remembered how to do it. A top of year mathematician may need to spend near to zero time revising for a maths test. However a less able one might need significant time understanding how it all works, and practicing techniques.

So I would recommend:

• some revision for every test until they claim they 'know' it (possibly backup tested by you). Then when the results of the test come back they can see whether the did sufficient, of good quality, or not.
• try different techniques until they find what works for them (online, mind maps, cards etc). active revision is better than passive
• make whatever revision notes as needed for end of module tests, and keep them. then they won't need to be done in a rush later.
• for some subjects there isn't so much actual content (eg Eng Lang), but being able to state confidently what is needed for each question is important
• key subject terminology is important a cell membrane is not the 'thing that keeps the stuff inside the cell'

What we know is effective:

Retrieval practice: the act of trying to remember something flags it as ‘important’ in your brain and makes you more likely to remember it in the future. So instead of simply reading a page about the causes of WWII, it would be more effective to try to remember the causes of WWII, write them down and then compare to the page and add new items.

Organising information into easier to remember formats: Instead of trying to learn a written history account, put it into a timeline or mindmap, or flash cards. A labelled diagram is more useful than an unlabelled diagram and a descriptive text.

Self-testing - doing quizzes, testing with flash cards etc

Interleaved practice: don’t answer a whole bunch of questions of the same type then move on - e.g. in maths if you do a whole set of questions on percentage change, then a whole set on reverse percentages, it won’t be as effective as doing a load of mixed questions on percentages where you have to decide on which method is appropriate as well as applying it effectively.

Little and often, repeated at spaced intervals over time. Cramming the night before an exam may be ok for that exam but it all instantly falls out of your brain after the exam which means you have to start again from scratch for the next exam.

What is not effective:
Reading a passage
Spending lots of time highlighting and making notes look pretty
Watching a video but doing no questions or follow-up work
In maths: doing questions but not marking your work and if you do mark your work not doing anything about the ones you got wrong
Spending ages on subjects that you enjoy or the areas you are good at instead of tackling your weak areas

"Spending lots of time highlighting and making notes look pretty" lol Noble! I had a lot of students who spent waaaay too much time doing that!

OP I agree with others, you need to find out what suits your teen.

As an example, my not very academic DS1 did not like writing stuff and so just wouldn't. The best thing for us to do was to find a practice paper (even one he had done before) and go out on a walk and do the paper. Or sit watching his brother play cricket and do the paper. I mean just verbally, It was hard for me to accept that school work could be OK if not written down (I am very much a writer) but it worked best for him.

Other good ways to remember things:
explain them or teach them to someone - you, a sibling, a friend
revise with a friend and quiz each other

My daughter is a big fan of flash cards. Just the act of writing them out embeds it in her mind. She also looks back at her exams and tests and figures out where she went wrong and listens carefully to feedback from teachers on essays, and tries to improve her points on the next one. She is competitive and knows how many points everyone else got and likes to increase her marks every time if possible.
I don't do anything (other than help her practise for her foreign language oral exams) but she is highly motivated.
I also think having to explain something to someone is really good. They may think they understand something, but ask them to verbalise it and they can see how they actually haven't thought out how to put it in words.
If the school does clinics that will help.
There's a real technique to some of the exams - in order to standardise the marking up they look for key phrases and quotes in English (for example), getting to grips with that will practically guarantee a certain level of marks. Past papers are readily available online (buy lots of paper!) and can be done under timed conditions at home .