Successful Revision Strategies & Schedules - what works?

[1980sMum]

I hope it is OK to start a new thread. With the lockdowns, I fear that the general revision strategies absorbed at school and through preparing for end-of-year exams will be lacking.

My teen (Y9) is very good at preparing notes but then never does anything with them so revision is a worry. I have been totally hands-off (not seen any of his work, reminded him or tested him on material etc) for various reasons this year, but also my teen is very reluctant for me to provide advice and will never ask for help.

The issue is that due to this, there is no revision techniques. I know several of his friends who are, I would say, of equal intellectual ability but whose parents have been able to share revision techniques and have a good schedule in place and these kids will do revision and, therefore, get the results.

To cut to the chase, I would like to know what revision techniques (e.g. writing all out, using revision guides, mindmaps etc) worked for YOUR teen (and I realilse people are different int their learning style) and I'd ideally want to hear from the SUCCESS STORIES and what worked. What sort of schedule do you have in place in terms of the study/homework vs screen time balance?

Thank you.

Saw this message yesterday but didn't have a chance to write properly.

I am a teacher so although I don't have older kids to be able to say what worked for them I can say what has worked for my students.

I would say the most successful students have had different stages of their revision. Also the way they revise would vary from subject to subject but my subject is science so may only be relevant for that.

Stage 1 was creating their own revision notes. These guys used the specification or checklists from the text book publisher and created notes from the text book or from websites like bbc bitesize. They pulled out the key points and wrote revision guides of their own- I hate ready made revision guides- there are only helpful once they have made their own notes to check everything is in there.

I try as much as possible to ensure that they have developed some revision notes throughout the course that they can use. The earlier they start with this the better. We do end of topic tests regularly and I get them to create revision notes for these and then they can go back and use these again for the real exam.

Then nearer the exam they can make whatever revision cards they want and many love this. I think the most successful are w&a cards rather than rewriting the same notes. However my key thing for science is actually doing as many questions as they can possibly do. There are tons of past paper questions online and if you can get them organised by topic that's even better. Ro a question, mark it using the mark scheme, add pints not made in another colour. Repeat. Repeat again. The same key words get given marks again and again and they get more used to it.

Anyway none of this will get done this year as exams are all cancelled but my year 10s will hopefully do exams eventually so I am working towards this already with their notes