Making a revision timetable
THEME: Revision Planning
ACTIVITY: Making a revision timetable
This is an activity for the students to do for themselves at home. Ideally it should be done at February half term – but it is never too late.
Give them(preferably electronically) the blank timetable layout – see below/ follow link
The timetable has every day – up to the end of the exam period – marked on and split into three sessions – morning, afternoon, evening. I change the dates each year on my copy, to make it easier for them.
My guidance is that each session should be no less than 3 hours long and no more than 4 hours long
They then need to do the following – in order:
Fill in their exams in the correct place
Blank out any sessions when they KNOW they cannot revise ( in school, football match, family wedding etc)
If there are any WHOLE days left on the timetable they should blank out one of the three sessions for relaxation/activity (It is never a good idea to try to revise for WHOLE day without a break)
Now they are ready to put their revision subjects into the timetable.
At this point they often will begin to panic a little – when they realise how little time is left to actually revise – good for focusing the mind!!!
Fill in the session immediately before each exam (because these will obviously be allocated to that exam subject)
Look at the end of their exam period – they might have plenty of time to revise some subjects if there is a large gap between exams. Fill in these sessions.
Write a list of each subject and do a tally of how many sessions they have already filled in for each subject
Count how many revision sessions they now have available on the timetable.
Work out how many of those sessions they need for each subject (clearly they might feel they need more for some subjects than others)
Write the subjects into the revision sessions on the timetable – spreading the subjects out over the weeks so that they are not doing all of one subject then all of the next subject and taking account of when the exam is for each subject.
They could- if they were really conscientious – go through the topics covered in each subject and write those in as well.
Their revision timetable is now full!! All they have to do is print it out, stick it on their bedroom wall, and start doing it!! If they miss a session they need to put it in somewhere else by losing a relaxation session. Many students say it is very satisfying crossing off each session as they do it.
Doing this NOW does several things:
Gives them a clear revision timetable
Focuses their mind on how few weeks they have left – revising for the exams does not seem like such a monumental task when it is all organised like this
Gets them to look at the topics to revise in each subject
NOTE:
Some students will never do this!!
Some students will have already done their own version
Most students will be thinking about it but never really get started on the planning – this really works well for those pupils
It is really good to use colour as much as possible so that it is “nice” to look at. If their ICT skills are good enough it is much easier to do it on the computer but many students like doing it by hand.
Please follow the link below for a complete document
