It’s internal exam season at the moment and (I)GCSE and A Level mocks are already underway for our Year 11 and 13 students, who are demonstrating great levels of maturity, organisation and resilience, writes Dr. Sarah Howling, Principal of Alice Smith Secondary School.Exams can be nerve-racking for children and equally for their parents. Here are some tips to help your child revise effectively:
- Your child should have a revision timetable; encourage them to stick to it.
- Make sure your child has a quiet space to work in, ideally with no distractions.
- Students should have had classes to support them with study skills. Talk to them about the method of learning and retaining information that works best for them. It could be reading and making notes, using flash cards or post-it notes, looking at video clips, playing back recordings of their own voice, mind mapping or perhaps a mixture of these.
- Check the exam specifications. All exam boards publish these, along with practice papers and mark schemes too. There are many resources available for revision such as past papers.
- Teenagers sometimes concentrate on their best subjects and leave their weaker ones until the end. However, it’s a good idea to tackle weak areas early on so they can ask for help from their teachers.
- Encourage them to break revision into manageable chunks and to take regular breaks in between revision sessions. It’s far more effective to do 30 minutes of successful revision – rather than plough on for hours on end and not get anywhere. Research has found that learning is more effective when spread out over stretches of time.
- Exercise, fresh air, healthy food and lots of sleep are crucial.
- Help your child to keep everything in perspective. Remind them that the better they prepare and the more confident they feel in their subject knowledge, the less stressed they will feel when the exams start.