This blog post is one of three posts written for parents looking for ways to support their child’s learning. In this blog, we’ll focus on revision support for students, but all three blog posts explore different ways you can support your child with their study skills, including reading and writing which all impact revision.
Studying is a skill that some students pick up easily, and develop strategies that work for them. However, for many students, more conscious thought might be needed to develop these specific study skills. This is particularly true for students with a neurodivergence, like ADHD, autism or dyslexia.
Study skills tutors can help your child based on their specific needs but there are many things you can do to help your child with revision, whether they have a formal diagnosis or not.
To help your child develop revision and exam preparation skills, it is useful to understand how memories are made.
Many of us think about our memories as files we can access and return to storage, without changing the content. Research suggests that this is not the case. When we access a memory, our brains re-experience it in a way that allows us to change it. The memory is then saved or re-remembered.
There are many theories about memory, but we still understand little about how it works. This is particularly true when we consider the biology and physiology behind memory. For example, where and how the brain stores memories. In the past, it was thought that retrieving memories involved the transfer of information from our short-term memory, to our long-term memory. Recent research has discovered that the process is much more complex. This highlights how much we still have to learn about the formation of memories.
Here are some of our top tips for revision support for students that you can implement with your child.
Spread revision out over time and mix up topics
Dunlosky carried out a study evaluating ten different study techniques. A summarised version of these techniques can be found here.
In addition to practising testing, two study techniques proved highly effective:
Distributed practice: Spreading studies out over some time
Interleaved practice: Mixing up the order of questions across topics
Distributed practice
Distributed practice is the opposite of cramming, and studies have shown that studying chunks of information spread out over time is much more effective than long periods studying the same topic. It is much more difficult to try to learn everything in one go.
Interleaved practice
Interleaved practice helps students gain a deeper understanding of the topic they are revising. Usually, students would learn a strategy and solve a series of problems using that strategy. With interleaved practice, students learn several strategies and then solve problems in a random order, using different strategies for relevant questions. This can be a powerful strategy for exam preparation.
Review learning
Encourage your child to return to their learning within 48-72 hours, or they may forget most of what they have learnt. They don’t need to cover everything again, but reviewing, re-summarising, or explaining the key points to someone else can help. To support longer-term knowledge retention and easier recall of the information, they should regularly revisit it, although they can increase the time between returning.
This video helps to explain that you only remember approximately 10% of what you learn. The ‘forgetting curve hypothesis’ highlights how we forget information over time if we do not use that information. Essentially, we use it or lose it!
Create a revision timetable
Many students feel out of control during exams and revision and using a revision timetable will help them to regain some of this control.
You can help your child create a long-term revision timetable using coloured blocks to represent different subjects. Remind them to think about the concept of revisiting topics little and often. Start with their last exam and work backwards to fill in how many sessions they would like to prepare for each exam. Once this long-term plan has been created, they can fill in the details about how they will use each session, and this short-term planning can be flexible as their revision progresses.
Summarise key information and link to what they already know
Summarising key information after a lesson or detailed revision of a topic helps reinforce learning. , It also gives your child a simple and quick way of revisiting the key information over time. This will help strengthen their knowledge. Some useful ways to summarise information for revision include:
For many neurodivergent students, it is important not to focus too much on rote learning (learning by repetition). Instead, the focus should be on understanding and being able to talk around the subject. We remember best when we link new information to what we know already (referred to as elaborative encoding). As your child is summarising new information, encourage them to make links between content and what they already know to support their longer-term retention of information. Mind maps are a great way to show these links visually.
Practice different question types
It is helpful for your child to have a clear idea of what different exam questions look like and how they would respond to them, but also what they are aiming to achieve. Many students will review past papers as part of their revision. This will be a particularly important technique for your child if they face challenges reading and interpreting questions, and writing answers. Some key things your child can practise include:
Identifying common command words(e.g. analyse, assess, discuss) in different exam papers. Search for each exam board’s definitions, or review a general overview
Correctly answering the question that is asked. It is important to have an ‘ideal’ answer as a point of comparison
Planning their answers
Performing under exam time constraints
If your child has used a scribe or reader in any of their mock or final exams, don’t forget to get feedback from their scribe or reader on what worked well and didn’t work well for your child. It is interesting to compare the perspective your child has with the perspective their scribe or reader has. It may give you insight into what could be done differently in future.
Encourage self-testing
Research has shown that practice testing is one of the most effective strategies to support the ability to retain and remember information.Testing is a useful tool to provide revision support for students.
Testing understanding and memory can feel stressful for many students, but it should be encouraged positively. Introduce it as a tool to support their understanding and retention, to help them identify areas for improvement.
In addition to practising past papers, there are lots of different methods your child can use to test themselves, including:
Having discussions about their revision: Discuss what they have learned, read, or watched. with a friend who is revising the same topic. They can fill in each other’s knowledge gaps and help each other to make new links.
Writing a summary of what they have learnt: This encourages them to think deeply about what they have learnt. They can link this to what they already know and put it into their own words. This practice helps support the processing and retention of information.
Create a mind map of the information they already know: They can revisit their textbook and notes to add other information they still need to learn to their mind map. They can use different colours for the new information and return to this again over time.
Complete a quiz: Many textbooks, websites or online apps like Quizlet provide relevant quiz questions. They are randomised, so students can’t simply test on the information they already know. This can be a common trap students fall into.
The ‘fluency illusion’ is a term used in psychology. It refers to the experience of thinking we know something that we don’t. This can be common when revising or learning information that is easy to understand. Testing is a useful way for your child to recognise what they don’t know and help to dispel this illusion.
Remember, testing should help your child learn. It does not test what they are capable of learning. Find ways to encourage them to feel positive about testing themselves and getting things wrong. If it feels easy then they may not be learning. Revising should and will be hard. Like any good workout in the gym, if they are doing it properly, revision will feel mentally tiring.
Ensure they regularly get good quality sleep
Sleep plays a key role in the consolidation (processing and formation) of memory, and studies have shown that we seem to consolidate different types of learning in different stages of sleep. This means getting a good night’s sleep can make a significant difference to our information retention and recall ability. Napping during the day or after studying can also help.
Identify what works for them
Prompt your child to regularly reflect on what is working and not working in their revision strategies. Encourage them to consider how important location, conditions, time spent focusing, distractions, type of content, work/life balance, and rewards are for their revision. You can then adapt any strategies as necessary.
Some questions you could ask your child to help them reflect include:
When and where do you study best?
What do you already know about your subject?
What else do you need to know?
What will be covered in your exams?
What revision techniques work best for you?
Have you made a realistic revision timetable?
How can I help to support you?
What works well as a reward for you?
After your child has finished their exams, reflection is important.. Discuss with them how they prepared for exams, what went well and not so well for them, and how they will prepare next time. They can then adapt their strategies over time as they build up more experience in exam conditions.
The most supportive thing you can do as a parent is to remember that everyone works differently and concentration spans vary significantly. It is important not to enforce your ideas about what should be done and how. What your child needs from you is permission to work in the ways that suit them best, not the way you think they should be working.
Explore personalised support for your child
If you’d like more personalised support, we can help with a bespoke needs assessment for children aged 14+. This can help you identify how you can support your child to excel in their studies.
What is a needs assessment?
A needs assessment is an informal meeting with our experienced neurodiversity assessor and your child, which you are encouraged to attend. Together we will explore your child’s strengths, weaknesses and the impact of any barriers they may be facing as a result of their neurodivergence or mental health condition. We will co-create strategies to overcome these barriers. We may recommend a blend of assistive technology, software, apps and reasonable adjustments that could be put in place for their independent study.
The needs assessment is followed by a bespoke report which explores any difficulties your child may have in skills like reading. We’ll work with you to create strategies to overcome these challenges in independent study.
Top Tips to help students with their GCSEs and A Levels.
Whether your child is neurodivergent, dealing with mental health or physical challenges, or you suspect they may have a condition; this webinar will cover exam preparation, stress management, study techniques and emotional support to improve your child’s study habits, boost their grades, and enhance their overall wellbeing.
