How to revise

Revise means see again. We expect you to revise throughout the GCSE course. Teachers constantly tell students to revise but don’t always tell or show them how! I am going to reveal to you the most effective study strategy and then we will look at some different ways to use it.

Teachers spend a lot of time trying to get information into students’ heads; retrieval (the most effective study strategy for remembering information) is practising getting information out without any clues to help. There are lots of simple ways to use retrieval as a revision tool. The three most important are:

1.Knowledge Splats

2. Self Quizzing

3.Flashcards

Past Papers can be useful but not as your first or only revision strategy. Past papers are most useful for retrieving methods to answer particular types of questions. This is particularly important for mathematical questions. 

These are not effective revision strategies and you should not do them

1. Reading a text book

2. Making notes from a text book

3. Highlighting notes

4. Watching revision videos

5. Listening to Music whilst revising

6. Doing past papers too early in the revision process. Completing past papers under exam conditions is good practice at the end of the revision process just before the exams.

You can also self quiz using the method of look-cover-write- check

• Look: read the information

• Cover what you have read.

• Write down everything from the information you have read.

• Check: take a different colour pen and look back at the information. If you have missed anything out or written anything down incorrectly, change it with your different colour pen and make a note of the parts you struggled to remember 

There are a number of resources available to you for your own self quizzing using look cover write check. Click on the links below to find them:

Knowledge Organisers for each topic in all four syllabuses 

Detailed notes for each topic  in all four syllabuses

Revision PowerPoints for all four syllabuses 

Key Definitions for all four syllabuses

Knowledge Splats

This one is really simple: take a blank piece of paper (no cheating by looking at your notes) and write down everything you can remember about  a particular topic.  Take a look at the knowledge organiser or the  Detailed notes for each topic  in all four syllabuses for the topic on which you are  writing Knowledge Splats  to see if there is anything else you have missed or written down incorrectly.

You can structure your Knowledge Splats using The Revision Check Lists to ensure you cover the whole syllabus.

Or with these  Supporting  Summary Sheets 

FLASH CARDS

Many of you use flashcards. That’s great! But here’s a surprise: it’s not always effective retrieval practice.

• Students actually “cheat” themselves by flipping cards over too early and dropping cards out of their deck too quickly.

• Here are three key tips to make flashcards more powerful (use the mnemonic "lather, rinse, repeat" to help you remember).

1) Retrieve: You should make sure you are retrieving the answer. Write down the answer or say it out loud before flipping the card over. This holds you accountable and ensures you retrieve, rather than falling for the illusion of confidence – thinking “of course I know it” and flipping the card over prematurely.

2) Re-order: You should shuffle their deck each time they go through it to challenge themselves with spacing and interleaving, instead of going through their flashcard deck in the same order again and again.

3) Repeat: Yous should keep cards in their deck until you’ve correctly retrieved it three times. We know from research that students have a tendency to remove their cards too early, so by ensuring students keep a card in their deck three times,

Many students are turning to flash card apps for flashcards, like Kahoot, Quizlet, and Anki. We have uploaded all the retrieval roulette questions for every topic to the studystack.com flashcard website. Enter Davenant Foundation School followed by either Biology, Chemistry or Physics in the search bar of this website to find them and use the flash cards. We have  made a video explaining how Studystack.com works and how it should be properly used to help practice retrieval. The video is here (Note the narration of the video starts after 28 seconds) 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1t1kfvYYDsoNt0Q3rRYWvEGvZRAfOefzL/view?usp=drive_link

Many students prefer to have Flash Cards to hold in their hand rather than use a Flash Card App or website.  If that is you then you can either buy yourself a set from CGP or print off a free set from this site.

Click here to the CGP website to buy sets of flash cards. Make sure you buy for the Edexcel Syllabus one box for Biology, one for Chemistry and one for Physics. Make sure you buy the Combined Science boxes or the Separate Science boxes for the Edexcel Syllabus,

Click here for a complete set of Flash Cards which are free which you can download as a series of pdfs and then print 

The Leitner Method of using Flash Cards.

The Leitner Method is the best method to revise with Flash Cards a specific topic which you have never revised before. The PowerPoint slide below to shows you how to use it.