Have I left revision too late?

How long till your next exam? If the answer is now then it’s too late, if not then there is still hope.  I was teaching a new bottom set as their teacher had just left unexpectedly.  We found out that there was 4 hours till the exam and they had not been taught any physics.  I used a set of diagnostics to find the worst topics that they knew nothing about and taught these specific topics.  We used pneumonic, acrostics and wrote learning and flash cards and then I sent them off to the exam. All but 1 student out of 12 passed that exam.  When we got the grades back there were even 3 C grades.  The point?  Don’t think it’s too late and give up, though it is far better to put a lot of time into your learning and revision to ensure that you are comfortable working SMART can rapidly increase your learning speed.  Let’s run through some of these techniques that I mentioned for ultra-efficient revision.

Flash cards

A brilliant tool to break up the course and carry it around with you.  You can use it for quotes, formulas, key target language or problem areas that you have faced.  Two ways to make flash cards to either have questions and the answers on the back or have a keyword and put some subject knowledge on the back.  What is key when you test yourself that you make two piles: one correct and one incorrect.  After about 3-5 incorrect cards test yourself again, and if you are correct move the card to the correct pile.  I managed to get my year 13s revising the whole unit in 15 minutes before the exam.

Pneumonics

These are verbal tricks to help remember lists of important facts like Have, No, Fear, Of, Ice, Cold, Beer to help remember the diatomic molecules (H₂, N₂, F₂, O₂, I₂, Cl₂ and Br₂).  If you have a list use a Pneumonics

Acrostics

Are very similar to Pneumonics where they can help you to remember lists but in a specific order e.g. OILRIG means Oxidation Is Loss (of electrons) Reduction Is Gain (of electrons). 

Wrote learning

If you have things like vocabulary lists or formulas to learn then saying the word and translation at least 8 times will start to link the words together.  Wrote learning is great for learning facts but should not be used for essays (we will write about essays in a separate post).

Try using these techniques in your revision and see how quickly you can learn things.  Work SMARTer not HARDer.  For updates and tips please sign-up to our work SMART not HARD system below.

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