At the chalk face: The 4 revision methods that actually work

At the chalk face: The 4 revision methods that actually work

Exams are coming… feeling the pressure? Good. It means you care.

In this episode of At the Chalkface, we cut through the noise and focus on the four revision methods that actually work — no gimmicks, no fluff, just proven strategies that help students retain knowledge and perform when it counts.

Before we dive in, we tackle the big dos and don’ts of revision — from why starting early matters to how short, focused sessions can beat hours of ineffective cramming. We also call out some common traps (yes, endlessly reading notes and highlighting everything 👀) and explain why they’re holding students back.

Then it’s onto the good stuff:
🔹 How to use Cornell notes for powerful active recall
🔹 Brain dumps & spider diagrams to deepen understanding
🔹 Smarter ways to use flashcards (that actually stick)
🔹 And why past papers are still one of the most effective tools out there

Along the way, we break down why these methods work, how to use them properly, and how to build them into a realistic revision routine — without burnout.

If you’re a teacher supporting students through exam season, or a student looking to revise more effectively, this one’s for you.

Watch now and start revising smarter, not harder.

#RevisionTips #GCSERevision #ALevelRevision #StudySmart #AtTheChalkface #TeachingTips #ExamPreparation #ActiveRecall #SpacedRepetition

08:12 - Cornell notes & self testing
13:47 - Mind maps
17:25 - Flash cards
26:10 - Past papers

For more from us - https://craigndave.org

Don’t forget to like, comment, and subscribe for more real talk from the classroom.

#ComputerScience #TeachingCoding #EdTech #CraigAndDave #GoCodeIt #AtTheChalkface #craigndave #revision

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Exams are just around the corner. Are you nervous? You should be. It means you care.

SPEAKER_01 0:10

Hello and welcome back to another At the Chalk Face today, tantalizingly called the four methods that actually work. Look, I had to look off to the screen there. I should I should know that, shouldn't I? The four methods that actually work for revision. So have you started revision yet? Are you just starting to colour in your revision timetable and thinking, oh, I might need to start? Should you have started already? We've got all the answers for you today. But we're just going to tease you slightly before we get into, and I promise we will, the four actual revision methods that we think you should be focusing on. We're going to just quickly rattle through a few do's and don'ts for effective revision habits. Get those out the way now, and you can think about those throughout then the four techniques we discuss. So, Dave, you do the do list. What are refective revision habits? These are the things you should be doing. And it already answers some of the questions I've just asked, actually.

SPEAKER_00 1:09

Yeah, and it feels like, you know, as teachers, we're teaching grannies to suck eggs here, right? Because I'm sure that uh you're already familiar with a lot of the advice that we're going to be giving you to give to your students. But it doesn't do any harm just to reflect on those uh each year, to repeat the same messages, really embed them in your mind so that you're confident when you're giving the advice to students. And I'm sure they've heard of all this before as well, but it's really, really important. So I guess the first thing that uh we should be advising students to do is to start revision early. I mean, what do we call early? I mean, for Craig and I, we actually start revision after the very first topic has been taught, and we treat revision as something you do throughout the course, not something that you just do at the end. But we are where we are, and so right now, year 11 and year 13 are going to be, you know, gradually getting into either a state of panic or a state of despair, but hopefully a state of confidence because they really, really should be advised to start revision early. And it's not too late, really, with year 10 and year 12 to start building in these habits now and make it a routine part of your teaching. The other thing that we would say is work in 20 to 30 minute focused blocks with five-minute breaks. It doesn't do any good for students to be working for hours and hours and hours on end. Uh, some students can do it, but it's really not great. If they do short focus 20-minute sessions and they have a break, that is just as effective. They don't need to do hours and hours and hours all the time. Um so taking that break uh after you've done a block is really helpful. But also importantly, once you've done three or four of those 20 or 30-minute blocks, you should just stop because you will get fatigued and you need to avoid that fatigue. So advise students to do three or four 20 to 30 minute blocks in a day. And if they have got that uh early start to the revision process, then it'll be more than enough for them. There are four techniques that um we know work. There is lots of advice out there, lots of different things that students may or may not do that could or couldn't work with revision. We've tried to distill that down to four critical tasks. So when they have that 20 or 30 minute block of revision time, pick one of the four tasks to do and do it for that 20 or 30 minutes. That would be our advice. And then, of course, using those four techniques across many sessions. So you might say, okay, I've got four subjects, I've got four techniques, and I'm going to apply them in my revision session across today and tomorrow, and sort of get those in a loop. It is important that you context switch. It might be a natural process to say, right, Monday, I'm just going to focus on computer science, and I'm just going to focus on the topic of architecture and the CPU. Actually, not necessarily the most effective technique, probably far better for you to do what we call interleaving and actually context switch. It causes the brain to work a little bit harder. So do a little bit of computer science, then do a little bit of English, do a little bit of geography. And indeed, even within the subject of computer science, don't just focus on one topic, you know, mix it up, do different topics in different sessions in one day, would be our advice. And really critically, and we know that this is tricky for some of our students, but we can provide opportunities in school too. Finding that quiet, distraction-free space. It's really important that students take revision seriously. It is difficult, it is effortful, it's not easy, it's not something they want to do. Finding that quiet space where you're not going to get distractions, really important.

SPEAKER_01 5:26

Right. So they're the they're the kind of generic top-level do's. Before we dive into the four techniques that we think really you should be focusing on, let's look at some common ineffective practices. And some of these may surprise you, some of them won't. Do not spend hours or getting your students hours reading notes, knowledge organizers, or revision guides, no matter how pretty they are. That might sound really controversial. Um, it's not the best way to revise. That doesn't mean they can't be used in effective ways, and they can't be used, knowledge organized revision guides, in combination with another technique we're about to talk about, but simply reading them is not effective. Highlighters, underlining notes, scrap that immediately. And we've all done it, we all remember it. We've got a pack of highlighters, and you start highlighting, you get to the end of the page, and you go, Oh, I've pretty much highlighted every single thing. It doesn't help you distill down the key information. You feel that everything must be important because it's there, doesn't work. Simply relying on multiple choice questions, and that's it. Many tools out there. We've got 50,000 multiple choice questions. I'll just hammer those forever. Doesn't work for a whole number of reasons, won't get into it. Cramming, well, I think we've made it clear. Start the vision, start revision early, make it part of an ongoing recall process. So, I mean, yes, cramming has been shown it can work, but the stress it leads to and it works for particular types of students. Can it work? Yes. Is it efficient and effective and should we recommend it? Absolutely not. Do not revise a single topic for long periods. Dave's already alluded to that. And do not multitask. Oh, well, I'll put my favorite movie on or my Netflix series or music with tracks. It's it's not great. Put that phone down filled with its social media messaging apps and all your friends. You need to concentrate. It's a cognitive heavy task. Um, do you have to do it in silence? No. When I'm working, I love to listen to soundtracks. Soundtracks are great, no lyrics. Uh, but I'll turn off the radio, for example. And please, ever so prevalent now and more relevant than ever, do not rely on AI marking. If you're going to be marking anything, try and use official sources. And we'll get into that. And by that we mean exam board specifications. Start to learn how exams are answered and the sort of things that examiners are looking for. Please don't rely on generic AI. So, okay, Dave, we have gone through a bunch of do's and don'ts, but it is time. We can't hide behind the curtain anymore. We have to proudly state what we feel are the four most effective revision techniques that actually work. So I'm going to hand over you for the first one. The first one is self-testing with Cornell notes. So tell us a bit about this, and hopefully you can expand, Dave, and what I was saying. It's not that revision textbooks are ineffectually bad, it's just how you use them. And I think this is where this technique may really sort of shine some light on that.

SPEAKER_00 8:29

Yeah, so I'm just going to put um a visual aid on the screen for those of you that are watching the video. Those of you that are watching the podcast, uh watching the podcast, listening to the podcast, um, what I'm actually showing on the screen now is an example page of some student notes using the Cornell method. And what we've got is the notes from the topic in the middle of the page. Now, this particular student has used a highlighter not for revision when they made the notes originally, when they learnt the content for the first time, having watched one of our videos. They've watched one of our videos and they've made the notes from the video, and that's in the middle of the page. They will have used those notes to help them with classroom activities if you're following our schemes of learning. Critically, to the left of that are some questions. And what the student has done is they've read the note and they've turned it into a question. And so those questions are things like, and here I'm looking at the topic of networking, um, give some advantages of networking, give some disadvantages of networking, what's a LAN, what's a WAN. So the student has written these questions and they've written them by turning the notes that they got from our videos into those questions. And then at the bottom of the page, we can't see it on the screen, they have identified up to eight keywords. So those again would be things like lan, one, possibly switch, router, those kinds of things. And again, they haven't invented those, they've plucked those out of the videos. Now, if they're not using videos, they could get this from a revision guide. They've got the notes in a revision guide, and critically they need to turn those into eight keywords and into a set of questions. But here's the revision technique. What they then do is they cover the notes section. Just a blank piece of paper, a thicker piece of cards, probably better. Um, cut out to the right size so it matches the notes in the exercise book. Cover over the notes. And then all you've got exposed are the questions and the eight keywords. And using those eight keywords and the questions, answer the questions. In other words, can you recreate those notes? It's not about reading the notes, it's about recreating them. Now you don't have to do it in exactly the same level of detail, but you do need to be able to answer those questions. Assume they might be one, two, three mark questions, depending on how much notes there are. Obviously, if it's just a single sentence, a couple of sentences, then that'll be one or two marks. If it's more about advantages and disadvantages, then you could see that as being three marks with advantages, three marks with disadvantages. So, you know, six marks in total possibly. But the point is that they already have the questions, they already have the answers in their notes, and they have the eight key terms to help them. So covering over the notes with a piece of card, can they recreate those notes on that piece of card? And they need to redo this activity again and again and again with the same set of notes and questions and keywords so that they gradually over time create a set of notes that are increasingly like the ones they'd written in their book to start with. Now, obviously, it's critical that students have copied down a correct set of notes. This is why we have produced the notes for the students at GCSE. So it is a copying exercise, but this is where they come into their own. If they're using revision guides, then it might not be formatted in a way that makes this particularly conducive. They might be better off writing out some of those notes and summarizing it again from the revision guide and turning it into a Cornell method so that they have the questions from the notes on the left, they have the eight key terms uh underneath. One way or the other, they need to turn the notes into questions and re-answer the questions. That's what we're trying to get to here.

SPEAKER_01 12:54

And of course, the main reason this works, Dave, isn't it? You've not said it yet. I thought you I thought you might, maybe you were going there, but I'm talking now. The main reason this works is it's active recall. You're causing the students to have to think by analysing the questions they've written, think back to what they wrote, look at the keywords. And any activity which encourages active recall way outperforms passive methods, which is why I said earlier, you know, a bit glibly, oh, don't read revision books, no matter how pretty they are, they don't work. You know, of course they work to an extent, but that is a passive review method, whereas this active method is proven to be far more powerful when strengthening your memory, creating all those links, and therefore leading to retention of knowledge. So that's really, I guess, the the the the guts there, Dave. I've what you're saying is why this method is so powerful. Have I got that right? Yeah, absolutely. Brilliant. All right, well, let's think on that one. We'll move on to number two. Uh, number two, and I'll lead on this one and let Dave sort of chime in, is uh brain dumps with something like spider diagrams, mind maps. We all know what mind map and a spider diagram is. Um, and again, this is active recall and retrieval practice, but what we're doing here is providing an alternative to the Cornell notes process because you know there's nothing like boredom to dull uh effective revision. So we're changing it up here and providing something different, but again, it's it's relying on this active recall. And for this one, let's say we'd start by placing the central topic they're revising as the as the central node, the starting point. And then the way we would like you to think about this is as we span out from the spider diagram and create extra connections and nodes, we are deepening the level of understanding and the thought. So, by that, what I mean is the first few nodes around the spider diagram, maybe we're drawing five or six lines out, they may effectively be the key terms or the core concepts. And of course, when that comes to exam questions, there'll be things like, well, the core concepts in the middle, state six things you know. They're the easy questions, the one markers. And that's the next level of your spider diagram. But then obviously we can expand beyond those. We take one of those nodes, and now maybe we explain that in a bit more detail. You know, now we're uh talking about what that means in a bit more detail, what the advances, what the disadvantages, what are the implications of that. So the outer spurs of the mind map are now becoming the describe and the explain questions. And as this spider map grows from the inside out, we are deepening the knowledge, we're causing more active recall, we're having to think a little bit deeper about how this concept, you know, is um how this concept is connected, you know, to the wider scope. Um, so it's a it's a really nice visual way of seeing sort of where the limits of your current understanding is. And like, oh, maybe I can get this part of the spider diagram quite deep, but I kind of get stuck over here. It's a nice visual way of highlighting where there are gaps with within a topic. Um, Dave, what do you want to sort of add on to that?

SPEAKER_00 16:04

Not a lot, really. I I think you've captured it. Um, absolutely. If it's a one mark question, then um, you know, maybe you just need the things on the on the inner ring. Um, if it's a describe or explain question, then you need the things on the second ring. Um, and as the the number of marks available uh increases, then you need increasingly uh the third and the outer ring. So it's just a different way of seeing brain dumps and spider diagrams. Typically, we've thought about brain dumps and spider diagrams as being everything you can possibly remember, just get it out there onto the page. And that's fine as an initial technique, but it needs refinement because when you answer exam questions, it's not about everything you know about a topic. You won't do very well if all you do is give the examiner a brain dump. It has to match the context and scenario, and it has to match the command word in the question. So you really want to structure that um a little bit more into state as an inner ring, describe as a second ring, uh, explain, justify, compare, give examples as the third ring. That is a better way of seeing spider diagrams. But again, it's one of those four techniques that you would expect us to talk about. Number three.

SPEAKER_01 17:27

Okay, number three, we cannot have revision, top revision techniques without talking about flashcards. But as always, we have a twist on it. Uh, you know, like all revision techniques, they can be used poorly or they can be used well, and there are little methods you can use to turn an okay revision technique into a really excellent revision technique. And let's face it, what we want to do is get the best benefit out of the smallest effort. I think that's a general human trait all round. Why put more work into doing something in more time if you can do it in less? So we're gonna talk about flashcards and revision cards, but in uh terms that we've been talking about for ages. And I I'm not gonna apologize for us starting to mention smart revise at this point, Dave, because obviously we have a flashcard terms mode in Smart Revise, and we've built it with all this pedagogy that we're about to explain. So, Dave, everyone knows what flashcards are, but how are we suggesting that they should use them differently? And you know, say we maybe refer to Smart Revise and how we've built this mechanism in already if people are using it.

SPEAKER_00 18:34

Yeah. Well, I think the first thing with flashcards is just to take a step back as a teacher and think about how you have advised students to get their flashcards because there is a real risk here that some students may not create enough flashcards, some students may create too many flashcards, some students will have insufficient or inaccurate or misconceptions on their flashcards. Other students may have too much detail on their flashcards and they end up becoming notes. So creating flashcards is a little bit of a skill, actually. Yeah. You need to make sure that they've covered everything in the specification, just enough detail to be able to define what the term is or explain what the term is enough so that you can actually uh remember it. So I think too often in the past, we've just said to students, right, create flashcards. And we've assumed because they walk around school with a huge deck of cards with an elastic band that somehow that's going to be good enough. And it needs a little bit more strategic thought than that. So we provide students with the actual flashcards that they need because then we know that it contains exactly what they need to know to define that term or explain it. And so what they've then got really is to have three decks of cards instead of one. And so they've got a deck of red cards, a deck of amber cards, a deck of green cards. Now I'm not going to go into what is known as the litner system. You can look that up for yourself, but essentially, different coloured cards on different days, being able to move a card from one colour to another as you become more confident with it, or maybe sometimes less confident with it. And so you need these uh deck of cards to be a little bit dynamic. If the card deck is small enough, is that necessary? Possibly not. You could literally just go through on a continual cycle the cards, shuffle them up occasionally and go through them all. You know, I don't think that matters as much as making sure that what you're capturing on the flashcard is what you need to know. Then, having done that, there's a real risk that it becomes passive because the natural tendency for a student is to read what's on the flashcard, the term on the front, flip it over to the back, read what they wrote as the definition and think, yeah, I'm happy with that. Um and then they'll just keep doing that card after card after card. And it gives them the impression of knowing when they don't really know. So, far better approach is that they look at the term on the front, and then on a separate piece of paper, maybe they try and write the definition. What is that term? Uh, what does it mean? Assume that it is a defined question in the exam. You know, define the term local area network, two marks, two things they should say about it. Um, having written that definition, then flip the back of the card and see and evaluate how close was I? Were there some key words in there that I missed? And that's where you can then um potentially think about right, next time I do this, these are the words that I want to mention in that definition. So maybe jump in.

SPEAKER_01 21:59

So I jump in. So I know we're not going massively into the litmus system, but as Dave said, this is the point where you're assessing what you wrote against what you actually should have. This is where you'll be saying, Oh, I've picked this card up from my secure deck, my green deck. But you know what? I've actually forgotten something. I miss some key words. I'm going to put it down to my orange deck or from my orange to my red deck. And you know, you said Dave said you can look up the litmusist yourself. But this notion of yes, looking at a term, writing out your definition, comparing that then to what is there, and assessing how you've done and moving that card between one of your three packs is really powerful because you start capturing knowledge that's as good, knowledge that you thought had been retained that has now slipped. So this kind of three-deck idea, which we call the litness system, and moving cards between them, you know, that those two things combined are such a powerful way of leveraging flashcards.

SPEAKER_00 22:56

Yeah, so so as I was saying, on that separate piece of paper, then writing down the significant words that you missed. So, for example, if you're asked to define a protocol, you need to have the word rule in there, really. And you need to have the word communication in there. So if if your definition didn't include those two words, then those are two words to write down on the piece of paper next to the word protocol, so that next time you test yourself on the word protocol, you can have a little look at that and you can say, Oh, I've got to make sure I use the word rule and communication. So I'm gonna have another go at that definition. I'm going to use those words in that sentence. Then discard that because next time you have another go at that term, you want to be able to remember that you needed rules and communication. So don't use that piece of paper as an eternal crutch. It's something that you need when you need it and you take it away when you don't, because we're trying to commit these things to memory. So that's how to use flashcards in a sort of very traditional way. With Smart Revise, there are two modes. There's reflective mode, which is very passive, and it just allows you to organize your deck of cards in the way that Craig has already explained. So you can have a look at a card, flip it to the other side, and say, yeah, that belongs in my green deck, that belongs in my amber deck, or whatever. So reflective mode is very good for categorizing the cards very quickly, um, but it's not an effective revision technique on its own. Far better once you've categorized all the all the cards from reflective mode, then switch into that interactive mode. And we know that students hate this because it requires a lot more effort. It does. Revision should be effortful, and so be in interactive mode once you've already categorized all your cards in reflective mode. And so interactive mode means that students do actually have to write that definition. They will need additional sort of apps or notes or whatever if they do want to record some of the words that they didn't include in their definition that they wanted that should have included in their definition. And maybe that's something we can look at in the future in terms of features of smart revise. But be in interactive mode, there's nothing wrong with them doing this on their phone, to be perfectly honest. I know there's a lot of hoo-ha at the moment about um you know, students and using phones, etc. The key thing is they need to avoid the distractions. So if they can turn off all the notifications from the apps so that when they're using smart device, you know, they're kind of locked into using that app, whether it's on their phone, whether it's on a laptop or a tablet or even a PC, the important thing is to put it into do not disturb mode one way or the other, so that you can focus on the task in hand.

SPEAKER_01 25:47

Perfect. And of course, the main reason this works, and we've spouted about this a lot, is because spaced retrieval practice is one of the most reliable techniques for building that long-term retention. And of course, the litmus system supports that. Moving it between decks, you're going to be seeing cards that you're in your red deck more regularly, but you're still going to be looking at cards in your green deck. So do take a look at that. Right, and our last one, and I'm afraid this is unavoidable, um, is practice past papers and practice them under exam conditions. Um, whether it is uh right or wrong, the main method of assessment in this country is still via exam. Um, and that's the way it's going to be for the seeable future. So we need to get practice at that. A lot of a student's grade comes to understanding exam technique, understanding command words, understanding that a question actually might have two or three parts to it when you break it down, and I need to be balanced. Oh, I must give the advantages of that and the disadvantages of that. This looks like one question for six marks. It's actually three two mark questions that I must be balanced. And then studying those mark schemes, looking at the sort of answers they put compared to the sort of answers that were in the MARC scheme. We've gone through in other episodes, we won't go from it now. Yes, students can have answers that are beyond the MARC scheme as long as they're correct, but safety, if it's in the Mark scheme, um, you know, that that is an easy safe mark. So we said it in the don'ts earlier, but this is really where it comes to the forefront, Dave, isn't it? Is that don't use AI to mark it. You know, set yourself a past paper, put away your notes, put away all your other apps, time yourself as if you're in the exam, and then pull out a copy of the Mart scheme and go through it by all means, you know, seek your teacher's advice if you've done this at home. But what do we do, Dave, when we run out of past Mart schemes? Because there's only so many. Could there possibly be a tool out there which will help and provide them with more questions?

SPEAKER_00 28:00

Yeah, absolutely. Obviously, smart advice, right? But um we're quite fortunate in a sense at this stage of the lifetime of the course because now there are lots of past papers and Mart schemes. Okay. And so going through the past papers and MART schemes is great. Are students going to get exactly the same questions two, three years in a row? Probably not. So just bear in mind that what you've got on the past papers there, you're unlikely to get exactly the same questions again. So it's good for getting that exam technique, it's good for you know practicing some of those that core knowledge. But I think it's also helpful to evaluate all the past papers and think about okay, well, what hasn't been asked? Now, let's be very careful here. It is impossible to predict accurately what's going to come up in an exam. Okay, it's just like the national lottery. Just because ball 34 has come out five times before doesn't mean that ball 34 won't come out again. Okay, it doesn't mean that it's more likely to come out than any other ball, right? You have to remember that at the end of the day, anything out there that is telling you predicted papers or anything like that, they are just making educated guesses based on what's happened in the past. So try and spot the gaps, rely on do all the past papers and then spot the gaps. And one of the ways that you can then broaden out the broad range of questions that you've got for students is by using Smartervise. Because the content in Smartervise is unique questions created by really experienced teachers, i.e., us, and past examiners or current examiners. And so they're not past papers, they are deliberately not past papers, so that you have that additional material that is likely to be sometimes in the gaps of the things that uh haven't been asked in the past. Really, really important. Do not rely on AI here. You know, as a teacher, the temptation for you to just generate a whole load of questions for students using AI together with sample mark schemes, hand them out and say, there you go, have a go at those questions. Look, it's a real science writing um proper exam questions. It's not something that you can just churn out of AI. Because the way the question is framed, the the Mart scheme, the uh the level of study, the assessment objectives, all sorts of things play into the creation of past paper questions. So be really, really cautious about uh assuming AI can do a really good job of this. It can, but the care that you need in crafting the prompts to get it to produce the things that are you know really of value, um it's quite quite difficult. So you're far better off using something like Smart Advice that has gone through more rigorous QA processes. And then also critically, students um see the marking as almost an administrative task, something that we can easily palm off to AI because all we're really interested in is the mark and the feedback at the end of the day. No, a critical part of the revision process is engaging with those mark schemes as an individual student. So please do not do a whole load of AI marking when you're doing revision. It's critical that students do self-and-peer assessment. Peer assessment is so powerful because it enables a student to see how another student has written the answer. They can then think, even if it's just subconsciously, about their answer and whether it was easy to mark, hard to mark. What did this student do that made it easier or harder to mark? What did this student put in their answer that was maybe too much waffle, wasn't precise enough, wasn't accurate enough? And they can use the MART schemes to judge that answer. And subconsciously, they're kind of able to judge their own answer through that process. So seeing how other people answer questions and reflecting on them and linking an answer to aspects of the Mart scheme is really, really powerful. And we're proud to say that SmartAvise is the only tool out there that does anonymous peer marking. So if you're not already using SmartAvise for anonymous peer marking, you really, really should because it's a fantastic tool, and we've created it specifically for these revision scenarios. So that is something that I would really uh give some thought to. And the final thing that I would say is there are some free topics in SmartAvise. So, yes, there's a lot of paid for content in there, but you've got three topics uh that are free. So you can give it a go. And critically, the paper two questions, the programming questions, they're all free. And so you can uh you can use those without giving us a penny.

SPEAKER_01 33:39

Marvelous. Well, there you go. There's our four top ways of revising uh yes, uh past papers, uh flashcards, brain dumps, spider diagrams, and of course Cornell notes. A couple other things I just want to uh touch on though just before we we end, Dave. I did, I was probably a little unfair uh at the very start there saying revision guides are useless, knowledge idlers are useless, and if you're watching this as a teacher, I just bought a set of fantastic revision guides. I've just spent my last term making knowledge organizers. You know, what we are saying is they become reference tools, not revision techniques. And hands up, I've been here before as a teacher in the past, and I can't speak for Dave, but I guess he may have as well at some point. Well, I've spent part of my department budget on a wonderful set of revision guides, and I hand them out to each student, and I feel good about myself. Revision done. Um, so what we're saying is of course they have value, but get students to use them as reference tools, not revision techniques. We then use these techniques and they become a reference for those. So that's the first thing I did want to say. My second one I'm gonna throw straight back at Dave. So, Dave, should revision be fun?

SPEAKER_00 34:52

No. Look, the time for fun. The time for fun is over, right? So have fun with students when they're learning the material for the first time. You know, your day-to-day lessons leading up to this uh point in time. That's the opportunity for fun. Students need to see revision as something that is effortful retrieval, it needs to be cognitively demanding, it needs to have a desirable difficulty. If you make it too engaging and too fun, then they won't find it difficult enough. And it's important that, you know, this is going to be tricky and they need adequate preparation for it. Not to be fearful of it, it's an opportunity to show the examiners everything you've learned, everything you know, and how good you are and confident you are with the subject. See exams as a positive thing. I know it's difficult to do that. I get it, it's really difficult to do that. But students are less nervous the more confident they are. And revision shouldn't be fun. If you're there as a teacher thinking, oh, right, so I've got um some revision classes and I've got you know activities to do um in after school sessions and things like that. Oh, the students won't want to come to after school sessions if I don't make this really fun and engaging. Look, what's the point of the revision session after school if it doesn't serve its purpose? Its purpose is to prepare students for exams. The time for fun is over. They need to know that they are up against the challenge, and so now it's time to have something challenging. It's just the way it is. Um, so if you have got revision sessions with students, then my advice is to do the past paper questions with them. Okay, model it, model that exam. You know, doing these mock exam situations makes them more confident. They know what they're going to get into. So give them a six-mark question and give them six minutes to do it. Having done that, you could then model the answer with them. Maybe you write out an answer with them. We call this walking talking mocks. Write out an answer as you would have written it. Then together you can reflect on the MART schemes, either with paper swapping, um, you know, for peer marking or self-assessment, just as good really in this situation if the students want to avoid embarrassment, um, and evaluate your answer that you wrote against the Mart schemes with them and pick up things that you did well, you didn't do so well, and everyone's sort of learning through that experience. And if if they can see that this thing is hard because you find it challenging as well, then um it's great. You know, they get that sense of we're all in it together. But the important thing is look, the time for fun is over. Please do something that is effortful, that is difficult, that's demanding. The students may not thank you at the time, but they'll thank you later.

SPEAKER_01 38:04

There you go. Revision shouldn't be fun. Day's lecture. Well, look, thank you very much for joining us. Uh, this is a stressful time for both students and teachers. So, you know, by all means leave a comment below. Or better still, if you've purchased even any one of our resources or you know, just one smartphone's voucher, you you may not be aware, you're entitled to join for free our mission control Facebook group. And in there, Dave and I regularly have contact, and there's lots of other teachers. So jump in, you know, join the discussion, ask us further questions. Uh, we we love to see you there. But thank you very much, and we'll see you next week at another at the chalk face. Bye bye for now.