Alright, so the title is a little misleading- nobody can maintain revision motivation all the time. No matter how dedicated a scholar a student might be, revision is an intensive process, and the expectation that we might be able to dedicate several hours a day to it for more than a month or so at a time asks a huge amount of willpower and energy from children and young people-- and constant revision can have knock-on effects on their mental health, too.
However it is an important part of getting ready for exam season and making sure that when students enter into the exam room, they’ve got a good sense of confidence that they can tackle what the paper throws at them. It’s designed to be a process of re-affirming knowledge rather than garnering it, and shoring up the frameworks and plans that we might have to write to if we’re taking exams in the humanities. But as important as it is, it’s understandable that revision motivation might stagnate after a week or so, especially if it still feels like there’s a few weeks until the exam, as it can be draining and anxiety-inducing, especially for students who are fitting it around their regular lessons and haven’t been afforded study leave.
Plans Can Change
Nobody loves Microsoft Excel. It’s duller than PowerPoint, has about 500 extra things to remember how to do than Word, and unless you’re doing some pretty high-level number-crunching, a calculator is a much friendlier piece of kit that does a similar job. But one thing it can do is create some pretty nifty revision timetables, and people everywhere this April and May will be using it to mark off some dedicated revision time in their week.
But this doesn’t have to be a static calendar. Each week, learners will find out more and more about what works for them, and be able to cross off areas where they feel confident – as well as find out ones where they might need to put in some extra hours, too. Creating or helping them create a timetable that’s optimised for where learners need to be on a week-by-week basis and allow learners to customise their plans- if they’re feeling confident in history, they can re-allocate that time to biology; if they’re struggling with French speaking, they may be able to ‘borrow’ hours from French reading where they feel like their skills are stronger. This means that a revision timetable is always relevant to their changing needs in the revision process, and it’s not so easy to dismiss it for a day or a week, as every planned session has a clear and immediate needs orientation.
Incentivise Revising
There are not many among us who find revision fun. This is a fact of life – there are often many more fun things we’d much rather be doing, and for some of us would actually rather be cleaning the shower and emptying the recycling bins than ever have to touch Fundamentals of Algebra 5 ever again. So incentivising revision can make a lot of difference, especially when it comes to younger learners.
The long-form structure of our testing processes means that it’s easy to disconnect the exam from the results, and this can make revision seem like a thankless task even when it’s an important part of the exam prep process. So remember to reward dedicated revising as well as the grades that come along a few months later. This especially with activities that can actively boost mental health and encourage mindfulness during the revision period – days out, home spa evenings and little mental health boosters like snack packs and prep kits can make it all feel a little more appreciated and worthwhile.
Breaks are Important
Nobody can maintain focus constantly: revision burnout is very real and it can lead to even the most dedicated revisers hitting a wall and ending up unable to engage with it if regular breaks aren’t a feature of those revision timetables we created back up there in point one. If a learner starts revising with a good few weeks to go, they can also get a good idea of how breaks fork best for them. It can be customed to reflect how the individual works the best: some people schedule in break days, some people act more responsively and take break days when they feel like they’re hitting a wall, and some prefer to take evenings off and keep all their revising to the afternoon. What’s important is that rest is a feature of the revision period.
Keep the Materials
It might feel therapeutic to be able to rip one week’s revision schedule off the fridge door and cram it into the recycling, but keeping these old timetables is a great way of being able to compare where learners have come from to where they are now. Not only can detailed ones make handy crib sheets when it comes to revisiting some of your revision to make sure it’s ‘gone in’, it’s also kind of inspiring to see how far you’ve come in a few short weeks. That last module might feel a little easier to tackle when you can see on paper that you’ve already done three of them, and being able to see on paper that you’ve got a record of your achievements and the time you’re logged already can make a final push feel just that little bit easier.
Change the Method
As ever, we’ll say this: revision is deeply personal. Ways that work for one individual might feel absolutely useless to their classmate, and ways that work for that one classmate might feel absolutely torturous for the next person along on the desk. It’s important to find ways that work for you, and if more than one seems to make the magic happen, change it up to create some extra memory stimuli when it comes to learning and re-learning. And this doesn’t have to apply to methodologies, either- sometimes ‘varying the method’ can look like revising with friends as opposed to alone, or even just switching up the revising environment. Abandon the idea that revision is done sat in silence at a desk and think of all the different ways that we take in information on a daily basis; from videos and audio recordings to conversations with friends and family – making a change once in a while can make the process feel more manageable, as well as more engaging.