Revision Guide
Where
The best place to revise is in a quiet room with a table and a clock.
To avoid eye strain it is best to have a reading lamp,
it will also help you to concentrate on your work.
When.
Always start your revision as early as possible each evening. Your brain gets tired and it is much harder to take in information the later it gets.
How.
This is the most important question.
- Plan a start and finish time. Use your revision timetable and stick to it.
- Your capacity to learn is highest at the beginning of a session. It then starts to fall but increases again towards the end.
- You can increase your learning even more if you split a two hour session into shorter sessions with planned breaks. Always start each session reviewing briefly what you covered in your last session for that subject.
How often.
When you revise you will only remember a small proportion of the information learnt. To improve your recall you need to review work regularly.
Example:
For a two hour revision session:
-
Revise for 25 minutes. - Take a 10 minute planned break.
- Briefly revise the work covered in the first session before continuing.
- If you then briefly review the work again after 1 day
- Then again after 1 week
- The information will move into your long term memory.
- You must keep reviewing otherwise you will forget.
- It is important that you revise often and review each session at the right intervals.
- Therefore it is very important that you start your revision early.
- Plan and stick to a revision programme.
- Remember you cannot expect to revise a whole course the night before!
Keep your brain active.
Try doing some of these activities.
- Make notes from your work/textbook
- Make spider diagrams of your work
- Highlight revision notes fro the most important points
- Copy your notes onto another piece of paper.
- Read notes out loud.
- Make a numbered list of information to learn.
- Make revision cards.
- Answer exam questions.
- Ask someone to test you.
