KS4 Support & Revision
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For any queries regarding KS4 please contact Ruth Cull, Vice Principal (ruth.cull@darwenvale.com), Darren Adcroft, Head of Year 11 (DAdcroft@darwenvale.com.
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Period 6 Sessions
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Revision / Coursework intervention sessions
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Progress Evenings for pupils and parents
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Parents evenings
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Targeted Mentoring
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Calendared Rewards to support motivation
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Bespoke Timetables
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Intervention Form Groups (Maths and English)
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Motivational Assemblies
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Breakfast Club
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Walking Talking Mocks
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Half Term Revision Sessions
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Careers advice
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Careers days
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Revision Timetables / Support
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Website Revision Resources
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Motivational speakers
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Parental Engagement
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Attendance intervention
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Online Portal – revision support
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PATH support
Scroll down
for our top
revision tips!
10 Revision Tips!
1. Try the Leitner flashcard system
Make 20 flashcards with key terms and definitions. Label three boxes: ‘Every day’, ‘Tuesday and Thursday’, ‘Friday’:
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Start your revision on Monday and read the definitions. If you can recall each definition perfectly, pop each flashcard in the Tuesday and Thursday box. If not, pop it in the ‘Every day’ box.
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On Tuesday, take out cards from the ‘Every day’ box and recall the definitions. If they’re perfect, pop them in the ‘Tuesday and Thursday’ box. If not, pop them back in the ‘Every day’ box.
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Then take cards out of the ‘Tuesday and Thursday’ box and recall the definitions. If they’re right, then pop them in the ‘Friday box’. If not, pop them in the ‘Every day’ box.
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On Wednesday and Thursday go through all of the boxes, with any you get right going into the Friday box and any that are incorrect going back into the ‘Every day’ box.
2. The power of three: free recall
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Use free recall tests (otherwise known as ‘brain dumps’) as a revision strategy by practising bringing information to mind three times. Get a revision guide and read the content on a page. Close the guide and write out in your own words everything you can recall. Open the revision guide, take a different coloured pen, and amend or add in anything that is not correct or missing. Put your written notes away and close your guide. Then on another piece of paper, repeat. Then repeat again three times.
3. Harness the power of self-explanation as a revision tool
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As you work through a problem, or even as you read a revision guide, ask yourself questions such as ‘What does this mean to me so far?’ and ‘What do I understand about these notes?’ Trial self-explanation while you complete a problem or while you read, as well as afterwards.
4. Elaborative interrogation
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Note down a list of factual statements from your exam board's specification subject content. Add ‘Why is this true?’ after each factual statement and then answer each one.
5. Mix it up
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Interleave the same types of revision tasks with different ones. If you constantly practise one type of problem, when you come to the exam with different types of problems you won’t have had the opportunity to select and practise the correct strategy to solve them. Choose one or two problems from each topic of a revision guide and practise solving one before moving on to a different type of problem.
6. Create your own past paper
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Look at a past paper. Then look at the subject content on the specification and try to create your own questions, matching the style of the past paper you are working with.
7. Space it out
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Avoid cramming the night before. Space things out weeks before the exams by distributing revision in smaller chunks. Instead of a few two- or three-hour blocks of time on one single subject, reduce it to 20 or 30 minutes, followed by the same amount of time on a different subject, not returning to the first subject for several days or weeks. Each time you return, start with a ‘brain dump’ of everything you can recall from the previous session.
8. Specification ‘brain dump’
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Download the specification for your exam board, go to the subject content section, and select a topic such as ‘Natural hazards’ if you are studying geography. Write down everything you can recall from memory. Compare what you have written to a revision guide’s content for corrective feedback.
9. LIFT your revision resources and past papers
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Get a past paper and use the LIFT (Learner Initiated Feedback Technique) strategy developed by Gianfranco Conti. Read each question on the paper. For anything you don’t understand, underline it and write a brief sentence describing what you don’t understand and why you think you don’t understand it.
10. Stand out from the crowd.
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Make something you want to revise seem more unusual or distinctive, so that it stands out in your revision notes. For example, if you reach for the highlighters, then highlight only the single, most important key term / definition / quotation in the revision guide. Alternatively write out the most important sentence in red, with every other in black,
or dual code only the most important key words on the page etc.