It is this time of year that revision can begin to feel tough. Exams are about to begin and you feel like you have been revising forever and begin to lose motivation. Changing up the way you revise adds an element of adventure and variety to your revision giving you that extra motivation to cross the finish line strong. Here are 5 revision techniques you probably haven’t tried to add that extra variety to your revision.

Before we start remember nothing can substitute practice questions completely, these techniques I talk about can be used to strengthen certain aspects of your revision but cannot completely substitute practice questions.

Writing Notes from Memory

For all you note lovers out there, you could try writing notes from memory. You can do notes in any form you like; mind maps, columns or just written out. Doing notes from memory is a great way to see how the topic and subject piece together too, this will really help with the mental map of your subject allowing you to see how everything pieces together. This is a really important skill to develop since it helps you loads with the end questions of a paper that often draws from multiple topics and making the links between them.

Presenting to your class

This is one where you will need to get your teacher on board, but it is super useful to do. This probably works best with an A-Level class since they are smaller. Divide up the subject topics between your class and then you each have to prepare and then teach the topic in the next lesson. The benefits of doing this are twofold. Firstly when you are required to teach something you have to know it really well so you can answer any questions thrown at you, this means when you learn a subject with the intent to teach it you learn it far better. The second benefit is when somewhen else is presenting their topic you get to hear it from a second point of view which helps you understand the topic better, as what they understand might challenge your understanding, discussing it together is helpful.

Flashcard Everything

You probably use flashcards frequently or at some point have tried them. Many people just use them for quick fact recall, like dates or chemical reactions. But they can be used to help with a far larger scope of questions. Firstly for any longer answer questions, you can write little essay plans on the back of a card so you know a rough plan for when a question of similar nature comes up in an exam. Most questions follow similar formats which is why this works so well.
You can also use flashcards for actual exam questions. With an exam question on the front and the mark scheme on the back. These are super quick to make as all you need to do is copy and paste. For many subjects, you can often find them pre-made on apps like Quizlet or Anki aswell. This is a great way to do practice papers in the time were doing a practice paper physically might not be possible like in the car or on the bus to school.

Interactive Online Resources

This is a great revision technique for GCSE students, using interactive resources. There are loads of online resources out there you can use. Seneca does great interactive resources that work as a great warm-up to get you into the mood so you are ready for some heavier lifting revision. BBC Bitesize has loads of interactive resources for loads of subjects even the super niche ones. The Studytrix team is even working on interactive resources that we are going to be launching a beta of soon so stay tuned (shameless plug over).

Changing Names on Snapchat

This final one is a little odd but it works really well. Odds are that even when revising you will probably spend quite a lot of time on your phone. So let’s try and make better use of it. What you can do is change the name of all your snap chat friends to equations you need to remember, dates or even chemical equations (obviously depends on the subject you are learning)  Doing this will just mean those key bits of information will constantly be coming up on your phone and slowly embedding themselves into your memory

Gives these all a try and your revision will have loads more variety and hopefully help prevent you from burning out before you finish your exams

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