How do your very bright DC revise for GCSE/A-levels?

[mumdtr]

Also how much revision and how often do they do?

It’s daily. She potters really - up at 8 am today did Spanish for a couple of hours. Now off to play tennis then I think she is doing Physics later. She has pretty much completed all the cgp books so Seneca, past papers, as extension and reading and looking at examiners reports etc

I left it up to my very bright DD1. there was no way she was going to take my input! Leave them to it I say.

I think truly bright DC can get through GCSEs with minimal revision.

That said, many of those who get 9s will be doing revision now too, and it teaches good study habits.

At A-level, it depends on the subject, but for the one I teach (a science) they need a level of familiarity with mark schemes which are very picky, as a minimum.

The students achieving the best grades in my subject tell me they do at least 2 hours a week + homework, plus more leading up to tests. They wouldn't include things like organising notes in this. Some of these students are exceptionally clever and grasp complicated concepts very quickly- they're also clever enough to realise they won't achieve without putting some effort in.

The very bright students who don't revise much tend to get Bs (alongside those who are not as bright but work very hard).

Equally, you get the students who are reasonably able, coasted through GCSEs with a little bit of revision and intend to "cram at the end" for A-levels- they often come out with Cs/Ds.

Depends on the schooling a lot. A friends kids in a private school had 4 kids in their maths A level class so the teaching was extremely focused. My state school DC had about 5 different teachers (and occasionally no teacher) for a class of 25. I don't know how much revision they all did but suspect that mine would have had to do more.

My DC have had very similar outcomes in exams and Uni etc. One put hours and hours in and and produced beautiful indexed revision notes . Another seemed to put very little time in. He certainly never wrote any notes down. The other two were somewhere in the middle.

What I'm trying to say is that it's irrelevant how much time other kids put into their revision. 😅

This is something that worries me (and senco ignore).my asd dc3 is y9 and never revises for a test because she says she's no need to - getting good marks in top set however I'm unsure if she knows how to revise. Won't take my word for it and school say she's fine because her grades are currently good. My view is its a skill that needs to be practiced. Every one learns differently and we need to find out how best we learn. Dc1 is a visual learner and spent hours watching you tube videos and films of English lit texts. It worked out OK and got slightly better than predicted grades at gcses.
So I'd start off by finding out how dc learn best and start there. Dc 1 liked a time table and stuck to it rigidly, likes to be quizzed using picture cards and needs an adult to boost confidence, dc2 likes flexibility leaves books everywhere and picks them up when he sees them and is layed backabout it but gets the grades and doesn't need or want anyone butting in, dc3 I have no clue!

Our DS2 is very academic. During his GCSEs he created a 'mind palace' (he'd watched the Sherlock series and got the idea from there) so would write himself notes, then insert everything he learned in there.
He didn't really need to do any revision, he just looked up the answers in his head 😮.
He got 11 9s in one sitting so it worked for him.

An averagely able child can get away with quite limited revision for GCSEs. A Levels are a whole different ball game - there’s a huge amount of content to the courses, so without a lot of steady, focused topic revision, kids will have gaps in their knowledge and understanding which will lose them marks. It depends a bit how much content they have actually learnt as they went through the course, and how far ahead of the exams they start their revision.

Assuming they start revising around February half-term:
GCSE - half and hour to an hour per subject per week.
A Level 4+ hours per subject per week.

Mine did GCSEs last summer and hardly seemed to do any! Not a stealth boast - I was really worried. He still managed to get seven 9s (and a 7 and a 8) but now I'm stressed about A Levels....

I don’t think mine did revise much.

A levels and medical school was a different matter.

Mine gets straight 9s in his mock GCSEs and other assesments with just a bit of last minute revision, but I'm expecting him to get a few 8s if he doesn't do a bit more for the real thing. His brother was the same, but in the 2020 cohort, so got straight 9s in his teacher assessed grades - not sure he'd have got that if he'd had to sit the papers. They're both clever and strategic and laid back rather than intellectual and stressy.

I have to leave DD1 to it. They mainly just read through the revision guides (for sciences). Last round of mocks she got all 8s and 9s. I think for a reasonably bright, organised kid with a good memory, it's possible not to have to do too much revision for GCSEs. However she had her first ever bad exam experience yesterday. She hadn't done any revision for it as it was in her strongest and favourite subject. It has shaken her a bit and I wonder if maybe that's no bad thing as she finally started to look through some past papers which I think might be the best thing to do if you're already confident on the subject content.