Part 2 - Revision Techniques

Active Recall

In last week’s blog, we looked at physical and mental well-being as a vital part of pre-exam planning. Looking after your health is the bedrock that supports your ability to learn and retain information so make sure you factor this in to your daily routine. 

Active recall enables you to work smarter!

This week, we want to add to the jigsaw by looking at revision techniques to help you maintain a productive and effective GCSE or A level revision timetable, minimising stress as much as possible. If you’re wondering how much revision you should do in a day, think about working smarter rather than harder by using active recall. This is a learning technique which involves actively retrieving rather than passively reading information. The process of retrieval builds and strengthens pathways in your brain, making it progressively easier to access the learnt information by strengthening memory and improving understanding. It’s ‘smarter’ because it’s a quicker and more effective way of learning.

Active recall exercises include:

Blurting: Write down everything you can about your topic. Take your time and give your brain the chance to retrieve every last bit of information you have stored on the subject. Once you’ve finished, compare your blurted information with your revision notes and add any information that you missed in a different colour. 

Flash cards:

These are a great way to learn new information, eg. missed facts gathered from the blurting exercise. They are also extremely effective for actively recalling and revising learnt content. Rather than just passively reading and highlighting text, flashcards force your brain to locate and retrieve the information, embedding the knowledge in your long-term memory and strengthening the connections in your brain, making the information increasingly easy to reach.

Past papers:

Easily accessible online, these are an invaluable resource for testing your knowledge and finding out where the gaps are. Again, though active recall, this gives you the opportunity to assess how much you already know - and it might be more than you think! It will enable you to strengthen the knowledge you already have and identify what’s missing, which means you can really focus your learning on areas of need.

Spaced Repetition:

Once you have spent some time actively recalling your learning and adding to it where necessary, repeat the exercise the following day. Repeat again a couple of days later, then a week later. By doing this, you won’t give your brain the chance to forget! Instead, by increasing the time intervals between each session, our brains are given the opportunity to extend and fortify the connections resulting in the information settling in the long-term memory.

Try and find a balance between well-being and study. The two support each other and, when both are addressed, you will find it easier to navigate and overcome pre-exam challenges. 

You’ve got this!