How To Revise...

So after a week of nail posts I thought it would be nice to do a bit of a life post.

As many of you will know from my prom planning stuff I am in my last year of school which means only one thing...lots and lots of exams. With just under a month until my first exam, it's time to start revising and properley not just "oh well I'll do an hour here and an hour there" but, so many people are asking "How do I revise?" So here is my attempt at trying to help.

Planning

First things first, you need to do some sort of revision plan. There is a number of ways of doing this, you can plan everything out to the final detail by using a revision timetable which has times written in, you can say you are going to do 3 hours a day and then fill those hours up making sure you spread the subjects the best way for you OR you can simply write a list of what you need to revise and try and fit it in (NOT ADVISED but may work for some)

Method 1

This is probably the best method if you are a revision NEWBIE as you can plan out what you want to do but you can still see that you are going to have time for the fun stuff. You can make this yourself which will take a lot of effort or you can use a tool on the website GetRevising which will create one for you. GetRevising is definately my prefered method for this as once you have made an account you simply put in your exams, use the sliders to say which ones you want to focus on the most and then add your commitments and you are all done.

Method 2

For my mock exams I decided to use method 1 but now I feel a bit more confident that I will stick to my revision I have gone for this option. To do this I am using an app on my iPhone called MyStudyPlan although a piece of paper will be fine. You need to write down all of the subjects you are doing, the next step is to work out how many hours you are going to have (e.g 4 hours a day, for 2 weeks is 4 x 14 = 56 hours but then you want two days off so 56-8=48 hours). Then you need to work out which exams are first and which ones you need to focus on most, once you have done that you can start to decide which subjects you need to do when. It is much easier to do this using an app but if you don't have that option then you should be able to do it by hand.

Method 3

I can't really say anything about this method other than don't use it, it may work for some but if you are a revision newbie I really can't see how it's going to help you.

One of the most important things is to make sure that you have a day off about once a week, this is important for two reasons; 1) So that you can socialise and have a day with your friends or family and 2) So that if you miss any sessions (which as a newbie) you are likely to do you have a day to catch up.

Another important thing is that you don't do more than about 3 or 4 hours of revision a day as your brain will begin to lag and you won't actually learn anything.

Learning

If you have got this far you will have heard your teachers throwing fancy words about like aural and sensory but what you actually need to do is work out whether you learn by writing things out and then reading them, listening to a recording or drawing pictures and using mind maps. This is not something anyone else can work out for you, really it's only you that can do this. Once you have you can plan your revision accordingly.

For me, I have to write notes out and then read them over and over again so this is what I am best able to give advice on. Some people learn by wrting out their notes over and over but I feel that it's a waste of time as the information isn't really going in. I used to write out all my notes in note books but not only did I spend a lot of money on nice ones but I was wasting paper and I needed to take a lot with me if I wanted to take my revision elsewhere. So recently I have decided to spend the money on pages for my ipad and then type my notes as then I only need to take one thing with me to do revision. This works especially well for me as I use BBC Bitesize to do a lot of revision. If you don't have an iPad but want to do the same thing then you could use your laptop and take that with you or you could type your notes on a family computer, then save them to a memory stick and take that with you.

If you are recording then record on your phone as most people always have that with them meaning that you will be able to revise when ever you get a spare half an hour. Also, don't record the whole subject at once just record a section at a time, that way you will be able to find things easier when you just want to look over a small section.

Drawing pictures and mind maps will generally have to be done on paper although there is a number of websites and apps now avaliable where you can do these things.

I hope I have covered everything but if there is anything else you want me to talk about then leave a comment below and I'll try and do it for you

Maddie x