Mastering the Art of Revision
25 February 2025 - Academic
At Wycombe Abbey, visiting and consultant teachers play a crucial role in supporting pupils and guiding them to reach their full potential. Read below for Consultant Teacher Tara Strange’s approach to successful revision techniques.
‘No pupil enters school knowing how to revise’
This statement from Helen Howell’s Revision Revolution reminds us that we need to explicitly teach pupils effective revision strategies. Frequently, pupils resort to comfortable or passive techniques, such as highlighting or re-reading notes, even though studies in cognitive science tell us that their time could be better spent revising more actively.
Pupils prefer these activities because they are habitual, require less effort, and can give the illusion of knowledge or understanding, when in fact, they only make pupils feel more familiar with the content.
The most effective revision techniques include retrieval practice, where pupils actively try to recall information from long-term memory with minimal or no prompts. Other active strategies include completing past papers, planning essays, or answering multiple-choice questions. Flashcards are also valuable tools when used correctly, such as with the Leitner system, which involves moving cards between boxes based on whether they are answered correctly or incorrectly.
Another effective technique is for pupils to create their own revision questions, test themselves, or have a friend quiz them, then use their notes to mark their answers. Teaching a friend a topic is also a great way to reinforce learning. Instead of cramming, pupils should aim to space out their revision over time and interleave topics, comparing similarities and differences between subjects or question types. Remember, little and often is far more effective than leaving everything to the last minute.
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