With exam and mock season drawing closer, it is important to have a plan in place – not just to prepare yourself for exams, but to look after yourself in the process. This post will outline some revision tips, and self-care tips, to help you this exam season.
Create a timetable
Creating a revision timetable is important for several reasons.
A timetable can act as a checklist, ensuring you recap all the topics you need to revisit. Without a proper plan, there is the danger of revising topics you naturally feel more confident on. Equally, you may forget about entire topics. I forgot to revise space as a topic for GCSE Physics! Guess what appeared on the exam…
A timetable also means you revise topics when you need to. It is important to space your learning instead of just cramming – as this will improve your long-term memory retention. The spacing effect is a genuine phenomenon, wherein reviewing knowledge every few days on a topic will improve how much you remember and how long you remember it for. If you do not revisit topics, and just cram instead, you will forget more knowledge more quickly than if you’d spaced your learning.
A timetable is not just important to plan out your learning, but also to schedule in time for self-care and breaks.
Regular breaks
Exam season is not a sprint, it is a marathon. It is vital you keep a steady pace, and do not exhaust yourself early on. You know from school that you cannot continue for several hours at a time – you need break times and lunch times to reenergise yourself.
When you hit a wall with your revision or work, taking a break is one of the best things you can do! I’ve lost count of all the times I fell into a panic with revision, but once I stepped away for a break and looked back with fresh eyes, the answer appeared.
There is a fine balance to be struck between breaks and work depending on your own limits and attention span. Some may benefit from the Pomodoro method, with 25 minutes work and a 5-minute break. Others may prefer to work for longer length of time, and in turn have a longer break. Know your limits and plan your schedule around this.
Audit your knowledge
If you are to create a solid revision plan, it is vital to be aware of what you do and don’t know. You may think you are confident in a certain area, but can you write an exam answer based on it? Will you remember it next month?
You can test this by doing a test paper or using flashcards. Whatever the method, it is important to be honest with yourself. It is okay to be unsure on several topics. The whole point of revision is to recap what you are less sure on after all! What matters is what you do about it.
Remove distractions
You need to pay as much attention as possible to your revision materials.
First, identify the best study environment for yourself. Is it your bedroom? Another room in the house? A plain classroom? Wherever it is, it must be a place with minimal disruption.
Next, identify the distractions within that setting. Phones are a major distraction, even when unused. A 2017 paper found that even the presence of a phone in the same room impacted a person’s capacity to focus. If possible, hand your phone to a friend or family member in a different room to ensure your focus remains on your work. You may be surrounded by distractions in your bedroom, so another room may be best.
Finally, inform family and friends when you are revising. That way, disruptions are minimal, and you know not to expect any messages (which again could distract you from revision).
Try new learning techniques
In class, you will be used to receiving and processing information in a certain way. To make revision more interesting, why not try a new technique to process the same information? There are several techniques you could try.
Flashcards are a common revision tool – and you can certainly understand why. Flashcards are ideal for breaking down complex topics into their individual components. They ultimately help you understand and remember the underlying facts and principles for a topic, which you will need when writing answers.
Looking at a wall of text? Can you translate the same information into a simpler and more memorable diagram?
A mind palace worked wonders for Sherlock Holmes, and it could do the same for you. This method involves selecting a location you know very well, planning a route through it, identifying objects along the route and trying to associate your learning with these objects. There are numerous guides on the internet to building mind palaces, but once created these can be powerful memory retention tools.
Try teaching others! You may know a subject well, but can you communicate with others about it? Exams are all about communicating your knowledge in a concise manner, and teaching is the same. Teaching others is also a light-hearted way to revise productively with friends. Remember, your friends will be facing the same problems as you, and a group session like this might help you all – you can help identify and correct their weak areas of knowledge, as they can with yours.
Write model answers
It is important to revise your basic knowledge, but it is just as important to revisit how to put that knowledge into practice.
Writing model answers involves researching past questions and writing the perfect answer to each question. Once you have exhausted past exam questions, make your own! For some subjects, exam questions can be rather formulaic and predictable – so creating your own questions is easier than you’d think.
This strategy allows you to consolidate your knowledge and practise verbalising it as the perfect answer. It is especially useful to write model answers on topics you are less sure of – you never know if this will crop up in the exam or not!
I wrote model answers for several questions of my own creation to prepare for my A-Level History exam – and one of these questions appeared on the actual exam!
Rewards
Exam season may feel like an intense period with little reward seen until August. You may therefore benefit from a rewards or incentive system to encourage yourself to keep going. Have you got a favourite hobby or a snack? Why not schedule in time for one after you recap a difficult topic or complete an exam?
This could be something as simple as crossing off exams on your timetable. I found this surprisingly helpful, as this countdown of sorts really helped me keep going.
Deep breathing
Exam stress is a very real thing – the UK Government recognise symptoms like feeling panic, tension, dizziness, and negative thoughts as symptoms of high exam anxiety.
Their recommendation to combat high exam anxiety is to practise deep breathing. Their suggested method is to inhale for 5 seconds through the nose, hold your breath for 2 seconds, and exhale slowly. There are more breathing exercises you can try if this particular one does not suit.
One of my teachers led our class in deep breathing exercises before our Religion, Philosophy and Ethics exams. Given that every other class was spent going over notes, to take time to clear our minds and rest was incredibly helpful.
Struggle to revise? Check out our Study Well workbook to look at the problems that people face with revising, and what you can do to solve them.
It is important to know when to ask for help if you need it. Always reach out to friends, family and teachers if you can. If you need more help, Childline and Mind both have further resources and helplines you can call.