Bolton Islamic Girls School

BIGS

Revision guidance for exams

Please open the links below for curriculum-specific revision guidance for end-of-year examinations.

KEY DATES

´Mid-November 2024 – End of term 1 Assessments
´Wednesday 18th December 2024 – Parents Day with teachers
´Mid-March 2025 – End of Term 2 Assessments
´Wednesday 2nd April 2025 – Parents Day with teachers
´Mid-June 2025 – End of Year Exams
´Wednesday 16th July 2025 – Parents Day with teachers

How much revision should I be doing?

You should start revising 4-5 weeks before your exams.

Create a simple timetable which gives each subject an equal amount of time over thecourse of the week.

You should aim to complete 1.5 hours of revision each evening and a couple of hourson a Saturday and a Sunday.

You should increase this time as the exams approach, and you will receive lesshomework. E.g. in the two weeks before your exams you might be spending 2-3 hours revising each evening and 4 hours on a Saturday and Sunday.

What should my revision look like?

Stage 1: Writing revision notes

In the first 2-3 weeks of your revision, you should use your revision lists to write notes under each of the headings, these notes should be a summary of the information from your exercise books and textbooks. Aim to condense the information by a half.

Remember that most of your subjects, design courses for you and so textbooks or revision guides will not necessarily be relevant. Stick to the revision lists you have been given and use your exercise books as the main source of information for your learning (unless other advice is given in your subjects).

It is best if notes are colourful, organised and include pictures as these will help you to remember them better

Your notes can be handwritten or completed on the computer.

Stage 2: Learning the content

In the final weeks of your revision, you should be aiming to learn the information in your revision notes. The best way to do this is to test yourself, read a few pages of your revision notes and then do one of the following (without looking at your notes):

  1. Produce a mind map of all the ideas
  2. – Define a list of terms
  3. – Answer some questions about the content of the notes
  4. – Ask someone to ask you questions about the content of the notes
  5. – Use an online revision site such as Heagarty Maths, Kerboodle , Seneca or BBCBitesize to test you on the content (just make sure that the topic content is thesame)
  6. Then go back and highlight / underline the things you did not remember from your notes, you should focus on these points the next time you revise this content.
  7. You should aim to test yourself on everything on your revision lists at least threetimes before you do your exam. THE CRUCIAL THING HERE IS THAT YOU RECALL THE INFORMATION WITHOUT LOOKING AT YOUR NOTES!

Tips and suggestions for revision

Research has shown that our brains remember the starts and ends of revision sessions best and so learning in short chunks is more effective than long revision sessions. E.g. if you are revising for 1 hour, spend 20 minutes on three different subjects rather than one hour on one subject.

Research has also shown that our brains start to forget things as soon as we have learned them and so we should aim to review the same information frequently. E.g. if you have a topic about electricity to learn, it would be best to review the topic every Monday evening for three weeks than spend a whole Saturday afternoon studying it.

Finally, our brains remember best when we are calm and relaxed and so start your revision early so that you don’t get stressed.

You should not worry unduly about these exams. We give you end of year exams to help you to get used to the revision and exam process. This is only one way that we use to assess how well you have understood your lessons, we have lots of other evidence about your progress. Just try your best and ask your teachers if you need help.

There is a famous sporting quote that says: “the more I practise, the luckier I get”. Think about what this might mean.

Useful Websites for Revision

General Websites

English Language

Maths

Science