Exam Revision
and Support
Introduction
• Summer time for hundreds of thousands of teenagers and
parents is a time of great anxiety as they prepare for
exams and wait for results to be published.
• This evening I hope to look at your perspectives on the
exam process and advise you on how best to help and
support your child during the run-up to exams.
Part One
• focuses on ways that you can help your child to develop
and maintain a positive attitude.
• identify the sorts of material and psychological support
that you might offer your child during this challenging and
emotionally charged phase of their life.
• outline a number of core study skills that are essential to
exam success.
Inspiration
• Sixth Form - encourage them to go out for a coffee with someone
that they know and respect who is currently studying in a school’s
Sixth Form or at a local college.
• Ask an older sibling, cousin or friend studying at university to invite
them to spend some time discussing experiencing university.
• Offer opportunities for them to meet people working in professions
that they would like to join and encourage them to quiz these
individuals on qualifications that are required and preferred within
their professions.
• Identify and take-up opportunities to informally discuss your own
exam results and the extent to which these facilitated or
constrained your personal and professional development.
Rewards
• Extrinsic vs intrinsic
• Simple quick rewards for small successes.
• Particularly useful when motivation is hard.
• What about cinema tickets at the end of the week – but
what if the revision isn’t done (unexpected).
• Time bound.
Refreshment
• An obvious way that many people wind-down is by spending quality time
with their friends. Although you need to ensure that your child doesn’t
spend excessive amounts of time socialising during the run-up to her
exams, take care to ensure that outside of the school day s/he gains
regular access to friends.
• Consider them taking time to have activities on Saturday mornings.
• Encourage your child to find time to focus their attention completely away
from sources of anxiety such as revision and exams through active
participation in local clubs and societies.
• We all deserve a degree of freedom to find our own ways of resting,
relaxing and recouping lost energy. It is therefore worth remembering that
an occasional lie-in or the chance to chill-out with friends in front of a
good film sometimes does the world of good.
MATERIAL
AND
PSYCHOLOGICAL SUPPORT
Support
• Despite the fact that some parents might seriously consider
the option of taking GCSEs on their children’s behalf, you are
not going to be able to escort your child into the exam room,
interpret the exam questions or correct their answers.
• You are also likely to find it very difficult to adopt a directive
style of parenting during the run-up to exams.
• Instead, you need to consider more subtle ways of providing
support.
• useful equipment;
• a positive home environment; and
• unconditional love.
Equipment
• At the most basic level, there are various types of equipment that
will help your child to prepare for exams and it is therefore a good
idea to set-aside a budget to cover the costs of these materials. Be
sure to directly involve your child in the process of clarifying what
equipment they need and try to make purchases as early as
possible.
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Fine-point coloured pens
Table lamp
Calculator
Diary or personal organiser
Notebook
Watch
Alarm clock
Calendar
Highlighter-pens
Equipment
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Folders and files
Educational software – BBC Bitesize
Past exam papers
Chair and desk
Revision guides
Textbooks
• They will benefit from attending extra-curricular revision
courses offered at his school.
• There are now also online tutorial services.
Positive Home Environment
• Some related issues to bear in mind:
• At the very least, students deserve a quiet private space (e.g. a desk in
the bedroom) where they can study and revise undisturbed by external
influences.
• You may therefore need to insist that at certain times of day the TV is
turned-down (or turned off) and noise levels are kept to an absolute
minimum. It can also be helpful to designate this as a family ‘quiet time’
when everyone participates in ‘studious’ activities such as doing
homework, catching up on email, reading the newspaper or surfing the
web.
• Have a think about ways that family members’ habits limit the extent to
which your child can prepare for exams. For example, bringing forward
mealtimes may release more time for study or beginning the car journey
to school earlier may provide chances to browse over revision notes
before the school-day starts.
Unconditional Love
• Some of the most fascinating research on successful parenting concludes that
the most effective parents provide their children with both challenge and
unconditional love.
• Facebook, Snapchat, X Box and Play Station
• Some antidotes to GCSE anxiety:
• Regularly invite your child to talk to you openly and confidentially about how they
are feeling and to let you know if there is anything at all that you can do to help.
At these times, restrain yourself from trying to ‘solve’ their ‘problems’ by offering
immediate ‘solutions’ and continue to affirm instead that you understand how
they are feeling or just hear them out.
• Create opportunities for your child to engage in activities that are completely
removed from the world of school, homework, revision and exams.
• Consider how you can create short breaks together to spend time and ‘switch
off’.
Time management
• One of the main reasons why many young people fail to achieve a good set of
grades relates less to their ability or ambition and more to the fact that they
seriously underestimate the amounts of time that they need to set aside for
revision.
• A few secrets of effective time management:
• Like money, time is a limited resource that should ideally be distributed
according to what we value and therefore according to our values. If your child
values their grades then they need to ensure that, at times, their revision takes
priority over other interests and activities.
• Due to the fact that our lives tend to be structured around our routines, one of
the most direct and effective ways that your child can release more time for
revision is by changing their daily routine.
• In order to provide a clear revision plan and reduce stress levels, it is helpful for
your child to create a revision timetable that clarifies what needs to revised and
for how long.
Date
Day
Morning
Afternoon
Evening
Date
Day
15/05/17
Monday
Tuesday
16/05/17
Tuesday
Wednesday
17/05/17
Wednesday
Thursday
18/05/17
Thursday
Friday
19/05/17
Friday
Saturday
20/05/17
Saturday
Sunday
21/05/17
Sunday
Monday
22/05/17
Monday
Tuesday
23/05/17
Tuesday
Wednesday
24/05/17
Wednesday
Thursday
25/05/17
Thursday
Friday
26/05/17
Friday
Saturday
27/05/17
Saturday
Sunday
28/05/17
Sunday
Monday
29/05/17
Monday
Tuesday
30/05/17
Tuesday
Wednesday
31/05/17
Wednesday
Thursday
01/06/17
Thursday
Friday
2/06/17
Friday
Saturday
3/06/17
Saturday
Sunday
Morning
Afternoon
Evening
Student Responsibility
Note-taking
Planning to Revise
• Think about your room and your friends rooms. Based on other
people’s rooms decide on an ‘organisation score’ out of 10.
• 10 being OCD tidy
• 1 being your room is an environment unconducive to
anything..
• ACTION – Get ready to revise.
• Organisation is a key component for success?
If you scored below 7 in your organisational score perhaps you
need to develop some better organisational techniques.
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Get some help.
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Tell your parents/guardians how much work you should be doing a night. Although this seems drastic they will
help you stay on track rather than ditch revision after 4 minutes and go out with your mates.
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Visualise success.
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Visualisation is a psychological technique used by a number of sportsmen to aid their performance. Just by
thinking about the benefits exam success may bring to you could get you over a revision hump.
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Start early.
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You have a set amount of revision to do in a year. You know about it two years in advance. You know that
cramming at the last minute doesn’t work. Spreading the exam revision load over a long period of time eases
stress and makes it easier to motivate yourself.
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Break it down.
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Very few human beings are as receptive to knowledge after two hours of solid concentration. Don’t do too
much in one go.
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Reward yourself.
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Make sure that rewards are built into your revision programme. “If I do 12 hours revision this week then I can
go to …..”
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Know yourself.
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You know how you work. Don’t plan on doing all your revision on a Sunday when you can’t work for more than
20 minutes without fidgeting.
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Choose a learning style that works.
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There are loads of ways to revise so pick one that you like. Try a few ways of learning the same piece of
information to see which you like best.
Remember you have to revise to do well in exams.
• Organisation.
The foundation of an A or B grade is organisation.
A good set of notes in an organised folder
provides and excellent platform for success.
• Memory.
Some of us are better at remembering things than
others. However here is a trick that may help.
If you learn something new, in general it will
already start fading in your mind after a few
hours. However, if you revise it again in the next
four hours it will take about 24 hours to fade.
Revise it in the 24 hour period and it will last for
four days, then one and a half weeks, then one
month, and so on.
• Revise at set times.
Set aside hours in the day you are going to revise,
make sure everybody knows what these are so you
don’t get disturbed. You can get into a revision
pattern where your mind expects to be revising
and therefore is reactive to the material.
• No more than two at a time.
Don’t revise more than two subjects a day. You
can’t do a whole topic in a day. Keep going back
and you will retain the information for longer.
• Look after yourself.
While you are using up energy revising it is important
to eat properly so that your mind and body are fit and
ready for the exams.
• Fish, eggs and milk are high in protein which is used by
your brain.
• Nuts and bananas are good sources of much needed
energy.
• Remember to exercise between revision sessions to
keep mind, body and soul active.
• Friends.
• It is far better to combine individual revision with
revising with friends and class mates. Lonely
revision has its place but interacting with other
people is an excellent way of gaining new ways of
learning information.
Playing games with the knowledge and testing
each other is an excellent way to mix things up.
But don’t waste time messing around! Stay on
task- you’ve got a long summer for relaxing!
Revision Techniques – mind maps
Revising with Friends
• Pyramid review.
• At the base, key learning points in the middle questions I
still need answered, at the top the most important thing
in the topic.
• Alphabetti spaghetti.
• A – Z of important pieces of information about the
subject you are studying. Make them pictorial, read them
onto a sound recorder or write them down depending on
your preferred learning style.
• Teach it.
• The best way to understand a topic is to teach it yourself.
Pay a visit to an elderly relative and try to teach them
what you’ve just been revising. Take a smaller sibling to
the park and see if you can make them understand a
difficult topic whilst walking there.
• Play Scattergories.
• Pick a letter at random (you could write the alphabet on
scraps of paper). The whole group has to come up with a
word to do with the subject studied. You get a point for
each word but no points if somebody else has that word.
Keep score to see who wins. It is important that this game
is focused on one area otherwise it’s too easy.
• Play Taboo. Pick a topic area. One
player has to get the others to guess
the word/ area with out using
keywords. This will take time to set
up. (Making the cards works as
revision as well though).
• Play who am I?
• The player sticks the name of a
theorist, writer etc on their forehead.
They then go to the other people in
the group asking yes/no questions
until they get the answer right.
• Just a minute.
• Pick a subject that you want to revise
and talk about it for a minute. No
repetition, no pauses.
The last Word
• Make sure you understand the components and format
for each subject. E.g. are your subjects mainly coursework
or exam?
• Allow time for exam preparation as well as just revision of
the knowledge.
• Remember to look after yourself- make time in your plan
for stress relief and get plenty of sleep.
• Make sure you know when all of your exams are. It would
be such a shame to do all this revision and then miss the
exam because you thought it was in the afternoon and it
was really in the morning.
Some useful sites
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General support for teenagers
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General parent support
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www.projecteducation.co.uk/gcse offers links to GCSE chat
forums.
www.bbc.co.uk
http://www.childline.org.uk/explore/schoolcollege/pages/ho
mework-and-revision.aspx
www.youthaccess.org.uk/
www.parentlineplus.org.uk confidential helpline for
parents on 0808 800 2222
www.projecteducation.co.uk
Exam boards
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www.aqa.org.uk the Assessment and Qualifications
Alliance (AQA)
http://qualifications.pearson.com/ Previously called
Edexcel
www.ocr.org.uk Oxford, Cambridge and RSA Examinations
(OCR)
www.wjec.co.uk the Welsh Joint Education Committee
(WJEC)
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Coursework and revision
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www.coursework.info
www.sparknotes.com
www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize
www.gcse.com
Careers
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https://www.gov.uk/browse/working/finding-job The
governments’ official careers information site
Visit the Education and Learning pages and choose ‘Which
way now? Years 10-11’ followed by ‘Your Choices in Year 9’
to find out more about your options.
www.Careersbox.co.uk - Careers films/videos – real
people in real jobs
www.icould.com - Career advice, HE choices
www.opendoorsmedia.co.uk - Regional training
prospectus – everything you need to know about college,
apprenticeships, careers, training schemes and jobs in
local area
www.apprenticeships.org.uk - National Apprenticeship
Service
www.targetjobs.co.uk - Careers info – construction,
accountancy, banking, law, engineering, environment,
media . . . . etc
Exams at Drayton
• Standards
• Phones
• Uniform
• Coats
• Water
• Calculator
• Timing
• Timetable
• Revision support
• Post Exams
• Receiving Exam results