Topic outline
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Planning
Planning is key to exam success. Prioritise your tasks then break your revision down into bitesize chunks and map out a plan.
Start Early
Mornings are the best time to revise. You’ll get your day’s work done much quicker and will have time to relax in the evening.
Eat Well
Keep your brain fed and watered so that it can work EFFICIENTLY . Try to stick to healthy options if possible.
Take regular Breaks
Avoid information overload by taking regular short breaks. Move around if you can, give your mind a rest and get some fresh air.
Test Yourself
Check what you know. You can do this with friends and family or on your own. It will focus your revision time and highlight gaps in your knowledge.
Stay Calm
Be positive and, most importantly, stay calm. Exams can be stressful but you won’t revise - or perform - at your best if you’re stressed.
Quiet Space
Find a good place to revise, ideally somewhere quiet where you won’t be disturbed or distracted .
Mix up your revision techniques
Keep your brain active by mixing up your topics or subject every hour or so. Switching your work around will help you stay focused.
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Good Luck
The secret to success is not good luck, its a lot of planning and preparation. Once you’ve done the hard work, make sure you give your brain plenty of rest ahead of your exam by getting an early night then simply do your best!
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Flash Cards
Flashcards should be used to test your knowledge, not just as a way to condense your notes further. Typically, people list bullet points on flashcards, they carry them around with them to reread. Rereading notes is a passive learning activity so is not an economical use of your revision time.
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Combine pictures & Words
The Pictorial Superiority Effect (PSE) explains that our brains find it easier to recognise and recall visual inputs – pictures are easier to remember than words. John Medina, memory expert (and developmental biologist), explains that text is pretty inefficient as words are actually viewed by our brains as lots of tiny little images that it has to process to find meaning. This takes time so pictures beat text – especially in the revision world.
Medina discovered in his research that, after three days, someone is likely to remember around 10% of information they read. If an image is added to text this figure increases and 65% of information is remembered.
You may not think you can come up with pictures for a lot of your revision material – but here’s some ideas.
· Authors and people – draw a simple portrait or stick figure
· Places – a quick map
· Figures and data – a chart or graph
· Dates and sequences of events – a timeline
· Process or system – a flowchart.
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Quizzing
Good old fashioned quizzing is an ideal vehicle to get students self-testing, which is proven to be a robust revision strategy, so that students can calibrate their knowledge and remembering.
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Mind Maps
Mind maps are a great way for chunking your revision into manageable blocks. Start with an overarching theme gradually spanning out. There's a few mind maps in the IT courses as well as the Science courses.
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