Another week completed and another week closer to exams for our Year 10, 11, 12 and 13 students and this week there has been a shift of thoughts towards best preparing our students for the exam season.
Even as I'm writing this, I think back to the previous statement I have just made. What is it that we can do to help best prepare our students for the exams they are due to face??
If I think back to my own revision when I was a 16 year old lad, I was totally unprepared and was fortunate to get by on the outstanding teaching I had throughout my time at school which saw me through my exams. However, I have always wondered if the skills I finely tuned at University were with me when I was younger how much better I could of done throughout my time at school. So what can we do as educators to ensure that both the lessons that we teach are consistently outstanding but also the revision our students do enable them to achieve the levels that they show throughout the year.
The first issue is to share with students the importance of revision and winning them over into doing it. There are so many distractions available to our students that were not around less that a decade ago when I was sitting on the dining room table with my school books. The widespread access to the internet, the epidemic nature of social networks and the ever evolving computer gaming industry adding further distractions for the students of today. Therefore, getting students to revise is half the battle towards successful results for them. However, this is of course easier said than done.
This year I decided to move from very structured revision sessions to shifting the emphasis on students understanding the importance of revision for themselves. I started off this lesson with an old family favourite game that we used to play as children, "things on a tray". I randomly selected 20 items from my the staff room and placed them, covered up, on a tray. I stood at the front of the classroom and gave the students just 30seconds to come to the front and see have a mooch through the objects. They were then given 30 seconds to write down the objects they could remember. Straight away students that didn't stand up and move down to the front were immediately annoyed they could not get any answers right. At this point they clocked onto what I was getting at, revision needs to be active and hands on by the students for them to achieve.
We set about to try different ways to encourage students to take ownership of their own revision. The five steps below are the results of a dialogue and discussion with our students about what is important during revision time.
Step One - Get organised.
Create a set revision timetable with planned breaks. If it works for you, why not stick to a similar patten that you have when at school. Manage how much time you have before your exams and work realistically towards those goals you can set, on an hour by hour basis or weekly basis. Secondly get your notes, hand outs, practice exam questions and revision booklets in order. There is nothing worse than getting prepared for the wrong exam!!Step Two - Start Big and Get Small
We encourage students to start looking at the topics as a whole before gradually breaking up each section and studying in greater detail. There are often many links between the different topics that students learn and it is important that they keep this in mind when revising.
Step Three - Process the information
One of the biggest pitfalls that students fall into is to just simply route learn or try and memorise the information. Although this may be useful for some people or certain types of smaller assessments throughout the year, the majority cannot learn this way. To truly understand the topics will allow students to explain themselves in detail which will allow them to access higher marks.
This year we have produced a wide range of revision booklets, they range from very structured, highly content based guides to a more formative approach with set tasks and activities throughout. Either way we made it very obvious to the students that these were to be "live" documents. We wanted to see them highlighted, scribbled on, cut up and torn apart if they so wish. The important thing is that students take the content on and make it useful for them.
There are many different ways in which the information can be manipulated by students. You have probably already heard of or even tried many different techniques and have decided on ones that work for you. Recently one of the best I have heard of is to use those distractions around us. Students are happy to ask each other questions right before the exam starts, but yet why are they scared to ask each other before?? With a close group of friends why not send text messages with questions a few days or even weeks before the exam. Maybe your teacher can ask regular questions via twitter/email too.
Step Four - Test yourself
The final step is to see if the information you have learned is going into your brain under exam conditions. Write yourself exam questions and see if you can answer them. Cover up mind maps and see if you can remember what was there. If there are gaps in your knowledge, then go back over that information and work to plug the gaps so you are truly ready for those exams.
And finally, good luck to all those sitting exams in the near future!
