5 common revision mistakes (and how to avoid them)

Working with schools around the country has revealed a common concern among teachers and leaders: they want to know how they can ensure that students revise properly.

We know that revision can make a huge difference to student outcomes (in fact, there is some evidence that it could help to close the persistent gender gap) but getting it right is tricky, and filled with hidden pitfalls for both schools and their students.

Here are some common issues and how to overcome them:

Key mistakes with exam revision

1. Ignoring the role of the curriculum

The creation of the curriculum should not be seen as distinct from the process of revision. In a well-constructed curriculum, there should be plentiful opportunities to revisit and build on prior knowledge. It helps if the curriculum plans and any resources are very explicit about these links to help teachers draw on them.

More on exam revision:

• Seven essential revision techniques for students
• Revision technique is about quality, not quantity
• Why GCSE students shouldn’t write revision questions

Ideally, the activities that students complete throughout their course should involve drawing on prior knowledge, not only answering questions about what they have just studied.

2. Not teaching revision strategies

Students don’t need separate lessons on how to learn, but teaching them how to revise should be a part of their lessons in different subjects. This can be as simple as using techniques that are helpful for revision in class. For example, creating mind maps or writing summaries, which can be useful to learn new material and, later on, as a way of revising.

This way, when students sit down to revise, they are armed with different, effective ways to go about it.

One useful approach I have used in the past is to create very short videos that model different ways of revising and that explain the principle behind them.

3. Believing that everyone needs to find their own way to revise

This is something you still commonly hear in schools and from parents. People sometimes point to their own experience as students, when they spent their time highlighting material during revision and they believe it “worked for them”.

The problem is, we have no way of knowing how well they would have done if they had revised differently and we don’t hear from all those people who didn’t succeed after trying such methods. We need to trust the research on the topic and act accordingly.

4. Forgetting the parents

Much revision is expected to happen at home, not in school, and this means that parents can be very influential. They need to understand what their children should be doing as part of their revision so they can support them.

It helps if their common misconceptions are challenged; for example, that people can multi-task. Knowing that this is a myth helps parents to understand why their child shouldn’t be revising in front of the TV or while scrolling on their phone.

5. Leaving it to the students

In a perfect world students would be self-motivated learners who would know exactly what to revise and how to do it. However, for most of us that is not the reality that is sat in front of us.

Students benefit from being supported with a timetable of what to revise and being given something tangible to do as part of that revision.

Bringing it all together

One of the most successful strategies I have used is to create a revision programme for the year, setting out what students were to revise on any given week and the activity they should do as part of that revision. This was tied to the curriculum, with the activities requiring students to link prior knowledge to current topics.

This necessitates teaching students how to carry out those activities, which we did as part of their regular lessons with a reminder that this was what they also needed to do at home that week. Once these timetables were created, we had purposeful homework set for the whole year and a structured way of students approaching their homework. We could also share this programme with parents and link it to support material for those who needed it.

Mark Enser is a freelance writer and author