With the school break for the Easter holidays approaching, we have set out some of our exam revision top tips to help you get the most out of the Easter holidays.
1. Organise space
Start off by ensuring you are set up properly. Create a revision area with enough space to spread out all of your books and resources, as well as ensuring you have a clear space away from distractions such as games or social media. Finally set your chair up correctly to ensure you are as comfortable as possible. These steps will ensure you are comfortable but free from distractions, allowing you to properly focus when you sit down to revise.
2. Revision timetable
Plan ahead to ensure you stay on top of your revision by creating a revision timetable. These can be rigidly split out by hours or more flexible, looking at what you want to achieve in a certain slot of the day. However you need to make sure that you set realistic expectations and don’t burn yourself out, so ensure you are giving yourself breaks.
Make sure the timetable isn’t too vague, don’t simply include the overall subject you are going to be focusing on for the allotted slot, but break it down into more detail. For example which topic are you going to be focusing on, what exam question may come from this topic?
3. Focus topics
Look at the areas you feel are your strongest and weakest topics and ensure you allocate more time to those topics you feel less confident in. Go over the topics multiple times to ensure you build your knowledge and end up feeling confident in all of your subjects.
4. Note taking
By now you should have many notes already formulated from your classes, as you begin revision you are able to go through these notes and refine them. Splitting the notes out into topics will be a really useful way for you to quickly glance through your notes and use them to act as prompts. A great way to refine your notes and ensure they are concise is through the use of flash cards, these will allow you to put the key topic and the keywords relevant for that subject.
5. Past exam papers
Once you have built out your notes around the topics you are then able to go back through past exam questions and find common themes that may well come up for your exam. Take these questions and build out mind maps of how you would go about answering the questions. Using your flashcards and topics as topics for each of your points. Keeping each point on your mind map as one clear paragraph or section to your proposed response.
You are then able to attempt to write the essays from memory, using the mindmap you have created you can work your way around the sections to formulate your answer. Look at self marking your responses with honest scores, this will enable you to understand what the examiners are looking for as well as what may be missing from your answer.
By following these tips you can ensure you are as focused and ready for the exam period as possible. Remember to plan and set achievable goals, starting early to ensure you have time to prepare and feel confident to sit your exams.
Finally good luck!
