Getting Students to Revise: A Hopeless Task?

Now that exams have returned after the Teacher Assessment forced on us by the pandemic, the perennial problem of getting some students to engage in revision endures. What strategies can be employed by classroom teachers to improve students’ attitudes to revision, and have a positive effect on their outcomes.

We’ve all been there.

“Right Year 11, end of module test next week, revision for homework. It’s really important as this will be the grade that goes home on your interim report.”

Once marking the test you get that sinking feeling. Something that you have taught in detail and appeared to be well understood by the class ends up causing carnage in the exam. What do you do about it? Extra classes? Detentions? Phone calls home?

Whichever you choose inevitably you will spend time going over it again, the class appear to “get it” as they did last time. You might give extra practice exercises which are done well, but when it comes to assessment the wheels fall off. So what’s going wrong? The answer is likely to be revision.

In my experience students fall into three categories when it comes to revision. The first group, lets call them group one, are the conscientious ones. They will work hard, engage in their revision and come and ask you questions about things they don’t understand. They are highly motivated and a pleasure to teach.

The second group, group two are the demotivated. It doesn’t matter what you do for these students they are just not going to revise. They won’t come to revision sessions, they won’t complete classwork or homework to the expected standard if at all. When you try and engage the parents, they are either indifferent or are having the same problems as you in trying to motivate their child. These students say that they don’t care about their results, either they are resigned to a certain grade and won’t try, or they’ve been told by someone they don’t need a grade in your subject so they won’t bother working. We can still help these students but it will take a lot of effort to get them working.

Group three are those in the middle. They are the ones that could move up to group one with the correct encouragement, or will fall into group two if it all becomes too much.

These students don’t like revision lets be honest. Going over something you’ve done already is just a bit boring. As teachers we cajole and try to motivate these “grumpy” teenagers to engage with our subjects, but remember we are competing with another ten members of staff, each vying for our students limited attention with the same passion for their subjects that we have for ours.

Equally if you sit down with students individually and discuss how they actually revise it becomes very clear that most of them haven’t the first idea of how to go about it. They may say that they read over the classwork that they have done. Some might do the odd mind map. Some may even write flashcards or post it notes. However, the common theme is that they get fed up very quickly and very soon they become distracted by their social media or the games console, and even those with the best of intentions will give up. We need as teachers to teach our students how to revise more effectively. If we can get them to engage in a method that works for them they will be more likely to revise and keep revising.

During my teacher training, at a time when the three-part lesson was the in-vogue pedagogy, one of the key messages was that teenagers have shorter attention spans than adults. I remember being shown graphs showing attention spans ranging from 10-15 minutes for year 7 up to year 13. This was supposed to encourage the planning of short lesson segments in order to better manage students in the classroom. This wasn’t always possible in GCSE required science practical’s, but as a general rule of thumb 15 minutes on a single activity works well in most cases. In fact, that is why commercial television has a break every 15 minutes. To encourage students to revise we can use this to our advantage.

Most students will get a revision guide at GCSE and A level. These can be used to help the revision process get started easily. I would suggest that students do the following:

• Choose a section in the revision guide. For 15 minutes read through that section making flash cards or highlighting the key points.
• Once the time has elapsed, stop, get up from their desk and have a break for 5 minutes.
• Return to the revision guide or workbook, and answer the questions on the section they have been reading, going back to their flashcards and amending where necessary. Stop after 15 minutes.
• Take another break, make a cup of tea and find someone in the house to talk to.
• Spend 5-10 minutes trying to explain to a parent what they have been revising. If they can do so fluently they have learnt that section well. If they struggle then they know that they need to revisit that topic again.

In the above example, the student has worked for a total of 50 minutes. They should find that this method of “bitesize” chunks was much easier than just reading over notes. By finding a family member to explain to they should hopefully receive encouragement and the family know the student is using their time effectively.

An ideal time to discuss this with students is at parents evening, as the parents can buy in at the same time, and keep encouraging the students when they start flagging.

This is just one important step to prepare students for exams. There is much more of course, particularly with regard to exam technique and answering subject specific questions and vocabulary.

Nevertheless, ensuring students do some revision, will have a positive effect on their outcomes. Indeed, once they find a method of revision that is effective for them, they are more likely to persevere and students will engage more positively with their studies in future.