Revision - Ages 11-18 (especially gifted and talented children)

Lots of pupils get bored with revision but I find it’s a problem with gifted and talented pupils especially. In an attempt to get them interested in revision I set them the task of producing a conventional mind map with key points reduced and well presented.

A follow-up activity involves pupils improving their mind map by replacing as many words as possible with pictures. The challenge set is that all the mind map should consist of is pictures. It does not matter what the picture is as it’s a personal revision piece, so only they have to understand it.

For AS psychology, for example, one pupil replaced the name of an author (Baron-Cohen) with the picture of Ali G whose real name is Sacha Baron-Cohen. It allows pupils complete freedom while ensuring that they have fully understood the topic in order to produce such a mind map.

I then get pupils into small groups and they talk their group through their mind map, discussing why they chose certain images. Again, while doing this they are revising the key information of their topic

Chris Wheeler teaches at Ashton-on-Mersey School in Sale, Cheshire.