Putting the Vision into Revision

Playground magazine is mainly distributed through local Primary Schools and Prep Schools (where school exams are a regular fixture and Common Entrance is not too far away), however, many Playground readers will also have older children at Secondary school.  A thank you must go to Jonathan Clarke for his practical tips and head-on approach to exams!

I have never really understood why revision is called revision. A typical dictionary definition for revision runs thus:

Noun
1. the act of revising or altering (involving reconsideration and modification); "it would require a drastic revision of his opinion"
2. the act of rewriting something
3. something that has been written again: eg "the rewrite was much better"
Not a single mention of the dreaded definition associated with school examinations!

To me the word implies that it is revisiting something that has already been learnt and all that is left to do is mull over it for a few moments and it will all come flooding back. But with the possible exception of Maths and maybe some practical subjects like Needlework or Physical Education, you are about to discover that you did it, but you don't actually remember very much about it at all. It is not so much revision but just vision without the re.

So there you are - if you've left it to the last minute like the rest of us - a week away from the exams, you don't know diddly squat about anything and now you've got to learn from scratch the facts about 10 different topics for each of 8 different subjects and only a few hours available to do it in. You are in for a very long weekend and some late and very stressful nights. 

...if you've left it to the last minute like the rest of us - a week away from the exams, you don't know diddly squat
about anything...

Now this has happened to us all every time the exams come round. So why didn't we learn our lesson last time?

When it's all over we say: Next time I'm going to start earlier - really I am!

So how do I revise?

Well don‘t leave it all to the last weekend for starters. Revision begins after the first topic ends.

I believe it should be a process built in by teachers themselves at the end of every topic.  Assuming it isn't, and it rarely is, we shall just have to do it for ourselves.

I'm being taught so that when I get to the exams I will know all I need to know.

This is a myth! And one which should quickly be recognised as such. Hopefully you are being taught but how much you are retaining or processing is probably a completely different thing. And it is better to find out how much that is, a safe and respectable time before the crunch of the exams themselves.

Buy yourself a card index box or organise yourself on the computer. In "Word" use page setup to set your page size to 4 x 6 borderless photos which will then print out as cards. These cards will be useful to learn from as bitesize pieces of information later. You should try to consolidate what you have done as each topic finishes.

Write down what you can remember about the topic.

Research what you still need to know.

Write it down in bite-sized chunks on cards that you can refer back to nearer the exams.

This ongoing process will give you the opportunity to discover in your own mind what has not been clear to you about what you have done and to check with your teacher about areas of difficulty and weakness. This may help future learning and will certainly prevent a last minute rush before the exams.

It all seems so simple but also far removed from what usually happens, especially if you normally spend most of your time playing catch-up with coursework and homework. Then again you will be surprised what habit will enable you to do, once you have established a routine.

Let's face it - you have known that these things called exams are coming up from the very beginning of the course. Shouldn't you be preparing for them? By ignoring them you are not going to make them go away. It would be like a farmer not ploughing his fields, setting his furrows, or planting the seeds, turning round and saying: so what's happened to my crop?

Burying our heads in the sand and proclaiming that we weren't expecting the exams to come round so soon, does not excuse our lack of game plan since the outset of the course.

Let's face it...you have known that these things called exams are coming up from the very beginning of the course. Shouldn't you be preparing for them?  Make sure you don't put too much information on the cards. Essential basics onto which you can place the detail will be more useful to go through the day before the exam e.g. essential facts and information such as dates, names, formulae etc.

One of the most fantastic innovations that supplies free flowing information on tap, is of course the internet, yet the majority of students do not use it enough to find out more about what they are studying. If you want to find other explanations about what you have learnt then it's all there just waiting to be tapped. You don't have to leave the comfort of your computer chair: just Google it, download it, edit it and copy it onto your cards. Revisiting subjects, researching them and taking time to make sense of them could make a tremendous difference to what happens when you reach the dreaded exams.

Now I'm not talking about becoming a swot - you don't even have to tell anyone else what you're doing if you don't want to - I'm talking about being able to go out the night before an exam, instead of sweating on the line and knowing that you've run out of time. Now just think how much more relaxed and awake you would feel if you didn't have a chasm in the pit of your stomach.

So you didn't do a single thing I told you and it's help NOW!!! that you need!

Well let's see, provided you've left yourself time that is, if there's anything else you can do to save yourself. But you're in for a hell of a final weekend. Hopefully you have at least a week to revise the 8 subject areas and you can do some of the following on a few subjects before the final weekend.

Count up the number of topics covered and the number of questions which you will have in the exam if known. Decide on your favourite topics and work out the minimum number you will have to revise (learn for the first time) in order to be able to cover sufficient questions.
Test yourself on each topic and find out what if anything you already know.

With your term notes (usually totally inadequate as they have been written by someone who did not have sufficient knowledge of the topic when they were made ie you), your teacher's subject revision guide,* your text book and the help of revision features etc. which you can find on the internet, sit down and make a list of all the salient points from each topic on index cards or the computer equivalent (see above).

Try to put your notes into some sort of mnemonic order so that you can recall them more easily. Eg HOMES = The Great Lakes: Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, Superior.

Test yourself by writing out everything you can now remember. Go over everything you couldn't remember and try to commit it to memory.
File the card ready to look at the night before/the morning of the exam - Continue for all topics.

Last thing at night look through your cards so that you can let your subconscious do its work on learning facts and remembering them in the morning.

Make up your mind now that you will not leave all of this to the last minute next time.

(* If your school does not provide subject revision guides available on its website this is something to take up with your head teacher as most schools provide materials for their pupils in all subjects these days.)

Hopefully you will come across a few favourite topics where you are pleasantly surprised by the knowledge you have retained - this at least will cut down a little on the enormity of the task before you.

Whether you have had a weekend out of a nightmare or you have acted on my earlier advice and just read through your index cards realising that all that earlier work has really paid off, it will be very useful to read through the cards on your last evening - assuming you are not still doing some last minute cramming - with maybe a brief look in the morning to reassure yourself.

Remember, on the morning of exams your brain may be going into turmoil and if that is true for you, then you are probably better to do nothing and think to yourself that you have now done all you can and what will be, will be and it really is too late to do anything more about it now. Good luck!

Some useful sites:
BBC BiteSize
www.bbc.co.uk/schools/revision
Masses of really useful information based for ages from 7 -16, i.e Key Stage 2 - GCSE

www.galorepark.co.uk/revision-guides
Galore Park is really an official ISEB site that contains revision guides directly related to Common Entrance at 11+ and 13+

www.s-cool.co.uk
A GCSE site - extensive coverage of a large range of topics

www.cgpbooks.co.uk
Some excellent revision/course books for Key Stage 2 and 3, which try to hit the mark with youngsters and make ideas simple and accessible.

And all I have left to say is The best of luck with the exams and may you win...

Article written for Spring 2009 issue by

Jonathan Clarke

11+ and 13+ Tuition

in Verbal Reasoning, Non Verbal Reasoning, Maths, English, Drama

at 11+, 13+, CE and Scholarship levels
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