Revision Activities
Revision that only re-reads notes achieves very little. Every activity here requires you to produce something.
Interactive practice
Two activities on literary terms and techniques — the vocabulary you need before any analysis is possible.
Loading activity…
Loading activity…
Activities to do on paper, alone
The one-page text summary
Reduce a whole text to one side of paper: one line per chapter or scene, the main characters in three words each, and three themes as full sentences. If it will not fit on one page, you do not yet know the text well enough.
Ten quotations, ten uses
Write your ten chosen quotations. Beside each, write the two different questions it could answer. A quotation useful for only one question is a poor choice; replace it.
The five-sentence drill
Take any old one-sentence answer and rewrite it in five sentences: point, evidence, explanation, effect, link. Three times a week for a fortnight.
First page, last page
Read the opening and the closing of a text one after the other and write a paragraph on what has changed. This exercise answers a surprising number of essay questions.
Cross out the story
Take a marked answer and cross out every sentence that only narrates. What remains is your real answer. Rewrite one paragraph of it properly.
Question rewriting
Take five past essay questions and rewrite each as a statement you could agree or disagree with. This is how you learn to see what a question is actually asking.
Activities for a class or a study group
Quotation auction
Each student brings three quotations. The group decides which are most useful and why. Arguing about usefulness teaches selection better than being told.
Hot-seating a character
One student answers questions in role as a character; the rest must challenge every answer with evidence from the text. Nothing exposes shallow reading faster.
Paragraph relay
One student writes the point, passes it on; the next writes the evidence; the next the explanation; the next the effect. Then the group discusses the joins.
Mark a model answer
Give the class a deliberately average answer and ask them to mark it and justify the mark. Students who have marked once write differently afterwards.
Theme sentences
Give each group a topic word and ten minutes to turn it into a theme sentence supported by three moments in the text. Compare the sentences produced.
Silent scene
For drama: act a scene with no words, only movement and position. The class then explains what was communicated and how — which is exactly what stagecraft questions ask.
The last month
- Revise your own written answers, not new notes. Your corrected work is the most efficient revision material you own.
- Write one full essay per text, timed. One is enough if you correct it properly.
- Rewrite one weak paragraph a day. Fifteen minutes, and it compounds.
- Recite your ten quotations aloud twice a week. Aloud, not silently.
- Do not read a new study guide in the final fortnight. It will make you anxious and teach you nothing you can use in time.