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Welcome.

Our aim at Bishop Barrington is to provide all pupils in our care with a desire and clear path to achieve academic success.

We strive to reach our aim by creating a climate of high quality teaching, firm but fair discipline, below average class sizes and a caring pastoral system.

How To Revise

There are 3 areas of learning that you need to be able to master to do well in your exams. They are:

  1. Registering - How to take information in
  2. Retaining - How to make information stick
  3. Recalling - How to make sure you can recall information when you need it

Registering

Revising for exams requires you to absorb large amounts of information all at once. This booklet contains ideas about ways you can restructure information so that it easier to absorb. Some may seem silly but have been proven to work. Try the ideas in different contexts as some may work better for you than others. Most people find a combination of strategies works best.

Skimming

When you are first looking at your revision material take time to skim through the information you are trying to learn. So for example with a book:

  • Start by reading through the chapter headings.
  • Flick through the pages allowing your eyes to wander over the pages.
  • Repeat this process from the back to the front of the book.
  • Stick five or six markers in the sections that are relevant to you.

Slicing

The easiest way to take information in is to slice it up into pieces.

  • Take a big paragraph and rule off and number it into smaller sections.
  • Group similar sections of information together.

Simplifying

Often there are too many words for the message to get through. Simplifying allows you to deal with the problem of 'spare' words. You can:

  • Scribble them out with a pencil
  • Rewrite the text in your own words (use abbreviations, for example dev.t for development)
  • Highlight the key words
  • Create bullet point lists of key ideas

Networked notes

These are an extremely useful way to organise and review information and for generating ideas. The aim is to look at ideas from different angles to make them more accessible to your brain. The information is arranged on the page in different ways.

Mind maps

Mind maps were developed by Tony Buzan and are the best known method of absorbing information. Here is how to mind map:

  • Turn a large piece of blank paper landscape.
  • Design an icon or logo that sums up the subject you are studying in the middle of the sheet.
  • Draw a number of branches coming off that central icon to represent the different topics. Make the branches curved and write the topics along them in big bold block capital letters.
  • Only write along the branches, not at the end.
  • Each main branch should have smaller sub branches coming off.
  • Make sure each main branch has a different colour.
  • Create pictures for each piece of information that are colourful and fun.

VAK

It is important that you use more than one of your senses to revise. Just reading a book will only work for those people who are visual learners and even then it won't be as good as if they use their hearing and feeling as well!
When you are revising and reading through your books choose one strategy from each type of learning style.

Visual techniques

  • Write down the key facts, creating key fact cards. You can then lay them out in front of yourself.
  • Aim to visualise what you are learning. Sit back, look up and try to see a picture of the ideas or information. E.g. if you are trying to remember one of Stalin's five year plans, see him sitting at his desk with each of the elements of the plan laid out in front of him including model farms, factories and hospitals.
  • Write important facts on Post-it notes and stick them in strategic places! E.g. the bathroom mirror, your wardrobe, your bedside table.
  • Use mind maps, pictures, cartoon story boards, photo stories and diagrams to summarise information.
  • Put the information into a screenplay of a favourite film or TV soap, comedy or sitcom, using your favourite characters.
  • Watch relevant TV programmes, films, DVDs, internet video clips.
  • Go to the library or bookshop and search for illustrated books with a lot of pictures.

Auditory techniques

  • Summarise the subject in your own words.
  • Read your notes out loud as you go through them, perhaps in strange voices.
  • Sit back, look from side to side and mentally rehearse delivering your notes as a speech on the stage (to a very important audience where you definitely the star turn).
  • Make audio tapes or CDs of the information and play them back to yourself (especially just before you go to sleep).
  • Explain the subject to other people (especially if they have never come across it before and you have to go back to basics in your explanation)
  • If possible find other ways of having the subject explained to you, for example relevant radio and TV programmes.
  • Turn the information into song lyrics or raps and practice saying them over and over in your head.
  • Put a famous tune to the information and sing it back to yourself.

Kinaesthetic techniques

  • Move about as you learn. If you can't leave your desk use your hands and arms.
  • Use actions to imprint the information on your body, e.g. make a cross sign with your hands when completing multiplication sums.
  • Use actions for different ideas, e.g. when memorising the gender of objects in French, clap once for a masculine noun, clap twice for a feminine noun and click your left fingers and then your right fingers for the plural.
  • Retype the information onto a computer and use a font, colour and print size that appeals to you.
  • Create key facts cards by putting key facts onto bits of card. You can then shuffle them like a pack of cards and keep reading them.
  • Give yourself kinaesthetic breaks by juggling or practising the drums.
  • Make models representing the information.
  • Create big, bold mind maps that allow you to express the information freely.

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