As GCSEs are fast approaching, year 11 students all over the country are revising to prepare for their exams. But what are good revision techniques? Well, it’s not to highlight randomly in a book, or read a page of a textbook and call it a day. Here are some ideas of how to get started:

 

Examples of revision techniques

 

Many people use flash cards to revise, and there are lots of online flash cards available on apps such as Quizlet (which saves you time from spending hours and hours making tonnes of them). Make sure to practise them multiple times and perhaps the night before an exam so the information is fresh in your mind. 

 

Another study technique is ‘blurting’. This is where you write down everything you remember about one topic on a piece of paper or a whiteboard. Then after this, use a revision textbook to add information that you have forgotten in a different colour. This is extremely helpful because it highlights the parts of the topic that you need to focus on. 

 

Additionally, practise papers are a useful source of revision. Make sure to ask your teachers about  which exam board each subject follows, then research these papers online. After completing a practise paper you could highlight the questions you got wrong and redo them a week later to see if you understand it more.

 

Subject specific advice

 

For subjects such as English literature, there are many YouTube videos and podcasts online that discuss the texts you are studying. This is useful to find alternative interpretations of texts that you haven’t been taught in class which can set you apart from other students and pushes you up the mark scheme. Also, creating mind maps are helpful to summarise information on characters, themes and context of the texts that you study. In addition to this, discussing quotes with your friends can be helpful to gain new ideas.

 

For Maths, websites such as Maths Genie have practise questions for topics which are categorised into grades from 1-9 (which indicates their difficulty). As well as this, on the website there are also videos on each topic if you are struggling with answering the questions.

 

For Science, exam workbooks from your exam board are very useful, because they contain practise questions for each topic. Also, Seneca is a website which has mini quizzes on every topic in Science.

 

For language subjects, you could make or use quizzes online for key words and try to memorise some higher level phrases which you can use in your writing and speaking exams. In addition to this, if you are taking French GCSE (for example) you could change your favourite TV show to French audio and listen to French music. This means that you are exposed to the language more often (which helps with your listening skills for the listening exam).

 

 

Everyone works differently so it’s important to test out a few of these revision techniques and stick with ones that you find most helpful. Good luck to all students with exams this summer!