Revision Strategies
Most revision consists of rereading, which feels productive and achieves very little. Two changes fix most of it.
The two changes
- Retrieval instead of rereading. Getting information out of memory strengthens it far more than putting it in again. A student who closes the book and writes what they remember learns several times more than one who reads the page again — even though the second feels more comfortable and looks more like work.
- Spacing instead of massing. The same total time, spread over four sessions across a fortnight, produces much better retention than one long session. Returning to a topic after you have begun to forget it is precisely what makes it stick.
Building revision into ordinary teaching
Revision does not have to wait for a revision term. These cost almost no lesson time.
Start every lesson with three recall questions
On the board before the students enter. One from last lesson, one from last week, one from last term. Five minutes, every lesson, and it is spaced retrieval practice built into the routine.
Return to old topics deliberately
When teaching the passive, use sentences about a topic taught two months ago. Two things are revised at once and neither costs extra time.
Set homework on last month's work
Not on today's. Homework on today's lesson tests short-term memory; homework on last month's builds long-term memory.
Test little and often
A five-question quiz every Friday, unmarked and self-corrected, does more than a long test each term.
Make students produce, not recognise
Write three sentences using the present perfect rather than choose the correct option. Production is retrieval; recognition mostly is not.
What to do in the final month
- Revise their own corrected work, not new material. A student's own marked scripts are the most efficient revision documents in existence, and they are usually never looked at again.
- One complete paper a week, under real conditions, marked and discussed.
- Rewrite one weak answer, rather than writing new ones. Rewriting teaches; producing more does not.
- Drill the cheap marks. Notice layout, letter closings, answering all parts of a question, checking verbs and plurals. These are marks available for attention alone, and in the final month they are the fastest gains on the paper.
- Stop introducing new material. Anything begun in the last three weeks will not be secure by the examination and displaces revision of things that would have been.
- Talk about sleep and timing. A tired student misreads questions, and misreading questions is the single largest cause of lost marks.
Three popular revision activities that do very little
- Copying out notes neatly. It feels productive and is almost entirely passive. If notes must be rewritten, require them to be condensed — a page reduced to five lines demands real processing.
- Reading a study guide cover to cover. Recognition is mistaken for knowledge, and the student discovers the difference in the examination.
- Long unmarked practice papers. Doing a paper without marking it is doing the least useful half of the exercise. Better one paper marked and rewritten than four abandoned.