How to revise! GCSE year 11

[Panic71]

Whilst having lunch with my son today he got quite upset and said that he keeps being told to revise but isn’t told what revision should look like.
Can anyone offer any words of wisdom as to how to structure revision for a year 11 student doing 9 GCSE subjects.

Some great revision tips here.
And an obvious one (but very important) - exam technique. Understand the question and answer the question. Know the mark scheme; don’t write pages for a two marker, and rush a 10 marker.
Start early (now!). GCSEs are a marathon not a sprint, there’s so many exams and so much content you can’t cram revision into the final weeks.

What a fantastic thread. Can I ask how early on did your daughter start doing practice exams?

I have a child who really needs help with revision.

How early should gcse revision happen?

This is such a helpful thread - I’ll be using the suggestions here in a conversation with my 15 year old this weekend!

Great thread. I agree with starting early. DD is just going into Y11 and has done quite a bit of maths revision over the summer - other than when we were away she aimed for 20 minutes a day on MathsBuster just to keep it ticking over, and often did up to an hour as she surprised herself by enjoying it. She’s also done some science but in a less structured way, and therefore I suspect less successfully. Still, I’m pleased with the effort and she’s feeling good about it too.

Great thteady

Following! I have a bright but somewhat lazy and easily distracted DS who's very resistant to the idea of any revision techniques other than reading through notes while listening to music. I'm expecting a tricky year...

Agree with starting early although I was keen for dd to have a proper break this summer without working, so she’s just started this week , otherwise it’s just too long a slog imo. Interestingly a teacher told me she was worried about burnout with her and then set a shit load of work for the summer 🤨

A proper summer’s break should allow a marathon with a sprint finish !!

I can sense my panic building when others say they have started already. DS needs a rocket up his behind.

@Panic71 she’s only started on the compulsory set work don’t worry - most of it is revision in some form or another. And she has a busy weekend ahead as it’s not done yet , but I still think this is better than working across the whole summer - it’s basically just extended the term by a week.

@Panic71 no need to panic. DD had very long summer holidays and had three weeks completely off when we were away. While at home it was her choice to do some work on the subjects she did least well in in her Y10 exams because she feels less stressed by having done some consolidation rather than none. It’s not really “revision” yet, and there’s plenty of time for that, for all of them. Just by starting to think about it now, you and DS are planning well.

There's a lot of excellent advice here but my daughters top tip is 'revise for the mocks like it's the real thing'. Doing this meant she that by the time she came to revise for her GCSEs she already knew it and was just refreshing her memory for most things. It's also a proper bench mark to see where you need to improve. If you do nothing you don't actually know whether the grade is a true prediction.

How's he doing in general? It may be that he doesn't have to get too hot up about revision if he's already doing well.
One dc literally didn't revise, just did the work in class and got top grades. They had the attributes of a good memory and a good understanding of what the examiners were looking for.
My dc who revised the most found the videos for science really helpful.and wrote brief notes on index cards. Middle in terms of revision just read their revision guides and noted down anything they'd forgotten.
So it will vary for each child. You can over revise and stress out, I've seen that happen and exam grades dip.

Thanks for this thread, @Panic71 .

I will also add for English Lit, Mr Salles books on the actual book they are studying, just brilliant. Ds went from scraping a 5 in year 11 November mocks to an 8 in the exam using Mr Salles' books because he already knew what he was going to write for R&J it all comes back to patriarchy. Mr Salles Youtube videos on poetry and everything English are brilliant. Again, Ds used the 5 key quotes and Salle's FOSSE method to know what to write. Read the poetry poems out loud every day to get familiar with them, far more likely to go in if reading and speaking.

And you can revise for English lang, as a parent I would go through a past paper question by question with them and check the mark scheme for each question, see what you got right and anything you missed. Re narratives, have ready made good descriptors ready to go, weather is a great one to do and easy to insert into a story.

Top tips (all from Stacey Raey, Youtube, won teacher of the year) they are looking for your use of language and punctuation to convey a story. Use

-Outside/Inside ie She greeted every person (but felt like a museum exhibit)
-Triple abstract noun, colon ie Despair, degradation, desolation: the fields were left longing for some form of life
-Fronted adverbial ie Frantically, cautiously, Wildly, Enthusiastically, Accidentally, Without warning, Within seconds, During lunch, In the dark forest, lying in bed, Absolutely desperately, Without interest, With clumsy footsteps, Quite slowly (don’t forget time, place)
-Verb beginning ie Considering, opening, wondering

Make the writing interesting. Ask a question.

Languages both of mine used the GCSE pack on Memrise, both got an 8. It was provided by school.

And use the year 10 mock papers to see where they didn't get full marks and write in the correct answer. They can use these again later to check whether they have improved their score compared to year 10.

Mine did History so for each period they used flash cards, they had a "time run" ie dates for things happening in date order and then "situations" so water, waste, diet, housing, what were the conditions in this time period for these. These are burned into my brain from helping my sons revise them.

One dc literally didn't revise, just did the work in class and got top grades.

Be careful, a lot of the work in class will have been revision, so he did revise, just not independently (homework will have been revision too).

I'm just pointing this out because you get some kids coming into sixth form who think that they don't need to do any revision for A-levels because 'they got great grades at GCSE without revising'. Except they did loads of revision in lessons and in homework. A-level is basically teaching right up to the exams, there's no time in lessons for revision because it's all new content. The kid who thought didn't need to do any independent revision suddenly finds that actually they really ought to.

We had mocks before and after October half-term, so DD started immediately after the school re-started in September. First the bits she didn't do well in during Summer tests and then working on topics they did in Y10 in general.

A bit each day with plenty of breaks and her normal after school activities.

She continued revising her weaker subjects then all the time.

They then had mocks again in February and it was kind of revising from January onwards. By April they had stopped all topic work in school and just did revision lessons, no study leave here.

Some great tips here but just wanted to add one for English Literature. My daughter found this podcast really helpful. It's two English teachers and in each podcast they look at an exam question and how they would tackle it. Lots of good tips on how to structure an answer, what the examiners are looking for etc. She went from a 5 in her mock in February to an 8 and from not enjoying English Literature very much to considering it as an A Level option!

https://www.buzzsprout.com/227488

Great tips! My son is about to start yr 11 and we had a brief chat today about revision plans for the year ahead. He will start next week, revising for about 30 mins per subject for two subjects., per night. Will see how he gets on with this and suggest he tries some of the resources and approaches suggested 😊

Thank you for this thread. My son is just starting year 11 and definitely needs a kick up the butt. Any thing that might help is great

I've sort of let DD organise herself up until now because she's very bright and diligent about revising.

These tips are absolutely brilliant though - I'm going to go through them with DD because with a bit of a tweak in her technique she might be able to improve on her predicted 7-9s.

Never did any homework either, used to do it in class when they'd done the set wotk.Except that the same held true for A levels too. I was worried that when the time came in their medical degree when they had to revise they wouldn't be able to, but they managed to do it then.
Each child is different but I do know some kids that spent loads of hours revising unnecessarily and ended up more stressed and not much improved marks
.