Draw up a list
Before you start revising, get all your notes sorted. Draw up a list of all the topics you need to cover before you begin.
Plan your revision
Plan exactly when you are going to revise, and be strict with yourself. Don’t revise all day. Revise in small chunks and take regular breaks. Make sure you do some form of exercise, even if it is just going for a walk.
Reward yourself
Give yourself little treats and things to look forward to. If you do a good day of revision, take the night off, watch some T.V, go and see your friends. Buy yourself some chocolate, but only let yourself eat it once you have achieved what you need to do.
Complete Maths questions
Don’t just read through the textbook! The only way to revise Maths is to do Maths. You will do much better spending 20 minutes doing Maths questions than spending two hours just reading a textbook. The more questions you do yourself, the more you will get right. This will boost your confidence meaning you will enjoy your revision more and do better in the exam.
Use the internet
There are websites that can set you questions and mark them for you. They take you through solving certain topics step-by-step. Use Spark Vids and BBC Bitesize Revision.
Don’t just practice the topics you can do
Keep working your way through the topics that you struggle with because it is much better to struggle on them at home, when you have time on your side and the answers available, than it is to struggle in the exam.
Make sure you ask for help
If you are stuck on a topic or a question, ask one of the people from your class, your teacher, Spark Academy tutor, or someone at home.
Practice doing questions under exam conditions
Get someone to pick you a set of questions from your textbook, or get some from a Maths website, and try doing them in silence, with no help, for a fixed amount of time. This will get you used to what it will be like in the exam, how fast you need to go, and is the best way of checking that you really understand a topic.
Practice using your calculator
Many people seem to assume that any question that lets you use a calculator is easy, and all calculators work the same. All calculators work differently, and unless you have used yours for lots of different types of questions you might not know how to use them in the exam. Find out if there are any problems early enough to correct them!
Revise with a friend
If it works for you, try revising with a friend for a bit of the time. You will find that one of you understands one topic more, whilst the other is a bit of an expert on another. Just by explaining things to a friend, you will find that your understanding increases, and likewise you might learn a different way of thinking about and understanding a topic.
Try not to worry
A little worry is not a bad thing as it keeps you focused, but revision certainly shouldn’t be a stressful time. It should be a time where your brain gets chance to sort all the information it has been bombarded with and make sense of everything.
GOOD LUCK WITH YOUR REVISION. PLEASE ASK FOR HELP IF YOU NEED IT.
-Katherine Wallis