If all you can do consistently is five minutes of revision per day , that's OK, so long as you're keeping up with your homework. So, taking all that into account, how long should a student study for in term time? I like to give this as a weekly number, rather than a daily number, as it gives students more flexibility about how they fit it into their own lives. However, the headline numbers are:. If they're doing 4 subjects in year 13 this might be 20 hours per week.
However, if you have mock exams in November or December, October half-term is a crucial time for revision, and if you have mock exams in January, the Christmas holidays are a crucial time for revision. You can read more about the rhythms of the school year and what to expect when here. So, before you start setting revision targets for the holidays, make sure the holiday in question is a target revision time for you. If not, take a break as exam years are a long old slog and you need to save your energy for the important times!
As I said before, this is a number that comes with many caveats and mitigating circumstances. However, the number I'd give if you have a very able and ambitious student aiming for the top grades in all subjects is If you've got a student who is less ambitious, maybe aiming for a mixture of grades 6 and 7, six hours per day would be a good target.
Again, this number won't apply for all students. Motivation is a key factor for many students. When parents ask me how long their de-motivated child who'd rather spend all day on their Xbox should be revising for, I always hesitate.
This is because I don't want to turn the child off revision altogether by giving a sky-high number. It's better that they do some revision, which in their minds is a reasonable target, than give them a number which they believe to be unrealistic and unobtainable. So, when I am talking to one of these families I always take into account the people in front of me.
I also always start by asking the student what they think is reasonable and realistic, and then we go from there. If that number is three hours, fine. If they consistently and reliably do three hours of revision through the holidays without complaining that's much better than making them feel like a failure because they're not doing 8.
One day when I was revising for some end of year exams at university, I got up at 7 am, started work at 8 am and had done five hours of revision by 1 pm. I carried on revising in the afternoon. I was so chuffed with myself and so happy about how much I was going to get done if I worked like this up until the exams.
However, I got up the next morning with brain ache, feeling tired and demotivated and I just couldn't engage my brain in the day's revision. For this reason, I always encourage study skills coaching clients and members of The Extraordinaries Club to find a number of hours they can do per day consistently. There really is no point in going for broke with revision one day, if it makes you ineffective and unproductive for the next two days. It's much better to be consistent. Some students will have been revising diligently and consistently all year by the time they get to February half-term or the Easter holidays.
Others will have grunted every time revision was mentioned and promptly gone off to do something else. Clearly, these two types of students and all those in between will be in very different places in terms of their exam preparation. The diligent types can afford to take a less pressured, more methodical approach to their revision.
However, those who haven't done any up to now are going to have to put some serious effort in to pick up their game. This happened to a client of mine last year. He received excellent GCSE results, but during year 12 became distracted from his studies by some issues in his personal life.
He was shocked to the core to get Ds and Es in some tests. It is also important to make your schedule realistic and allow time for social activities, exercise and rest. Share your revision plan with friends or family to keep yourself accountable and ensure you to stick to it. Also trying to keep revision at routine times of the day, rather than change it every week.
Routines create structure and help you reach your revision goals, plus reduces procrastination. The real power in routines is the way they can help us build momentum, break bad habits, prioritize our time and make us more efficient.
Do not just passively read the textbook and expect the subject to jump off the page and stick in your head. Use the ideas below to transform the information, manipulate it, do something active with it to make it memorable and meaningful to you.
The benefits of a more active, elaborative interrogation of the subject are well researched. Start with a central theme and organise the information from it into subjects. Label the branches with single words or short statements that have a relationship with the main topic. Very often visual references are easier to recall than only written ones. It can get really overwhelming during long revision periods if you have loads of notes everywhere, sheets of paper stuffed in bags or lose in different notebooks or folders.
Make quick summaries at the end of a lesson or subject, like the synopsis on a book. A different discipline to note taking, flashcards help you break down the revision of complex subjects up into bite sized parts and to test yourself on your knowledge.
The exam board marking criteria mentioned above will highlight the topics you want to learn. Keep your flashcards simple, on one side write a key term, on the other side write a definition. Then build up a set per subject, making flashcards until you've covered all of the key component of that GCSE subject. Again, you can add simple illustrations, flow diagrams and other visual references. One of the most valuable aspects of past papers comes after completing them.
Take the time to analyse your answers against the marking criteria and examples answers of provided , as a way to identify where you have knowledge gaps that need addressing. Most exams boards will have different lists of command words per subject and being able to spot these words as soon as you first scan a question — and thinking about what they mean — will both save you time and get you extra marks in the GCSE exams.
Just make a note of your questions and book some time with your teacher, but then continue with the remaining revision. Small immediate rewards placed at the end of each minute revision session, like a brew and biscuits or ten minutes on social media can be helpful. Skip to content. Spacing: Doing something little and often is far more effective than cramming. This is because the time in between allows you to forget and re-learn the information, which cements it in your long-term memory.
Whilst there is no ideal amount of time to leave between study sessions, research suggests that how long you want to retain the information is key. If the test is in a week, students should try to create time once a day. Interleaving: Doing a variety of subjects every day, rather than focusing on a single subject, is proven to be a more effective revision strategy. By helping students make links and distinctions between different subjects, interleaving allows them to understand and practice the different thought processes required for different subjects and problems.
Testing: Active revision techniques such as tests, quizzes or past papers are some of the most effective ways to improve memory, with students who regularly test themselves remembering significantly more than more those using more passive techniques such as note writing or underlining. Regular testing also make students more immune to the detrimental effects of stress on memory, helping them to perform better in the actual exam.
For example, some students become more motivated and focused if their buddy is working hard. Researchers also found that teenagers working through a problem-solving task together became engaged in more exploratory behaviour and learned faster, compared with those working on their own. Keep it varied and active: Writing notes and highlighting are two of the most common techniques used by students.
0コメント