We have developed a Revision at Pilton strategy to support students to prepare effectively for examinations and assessments. The strategy centres around the three principles of Summarise, Revise and Test.
Summarising is the process of condensing your notes into bullet points and/or pictures. This will help you to remember more information as you have to think hard about how to reduce the information. Many students stop at this point but creating revision materials is only the start. We suggest you spend only a third of your time creating revision resources such as mind maps and revision clocks.
This is where we embed knowledge into our long term memory. To do this we suggest you recreate your mind maps or revision clocks from memory. Test yourself with flash cards or retrieval loops. Your revision guide will explain how to do this step.
Retrieving information from memory through testing yourself at every stage not only strengthens your ability to retain information but also improves connections in your brain between different concepts. Active recall is more difficult and mentally more taxing than re-reading. But the key point is, revision should be cognitively demanding!
Completing practice questions is the best way that you can prepare for the examinations. Not only will you see similar questions time and time again, you will also see the mark schemes so that you can perfect the way to answer questions using the correct terminology.
For some students revision is very easy, however we recognise that for many it can become overwhelming. At Pilton we produce a suggested revision timetable well in advance to support students with their exam preparation.
Year-group-specific revision resources and guides for each of the three assessment windows are available via the relevant links below.
