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Interactive Revision Strategies
Steve Pendleton
Yvonne Kind
Warwickshire LA
History and connections
The context – personal observations
• Teachers have only a limited range of strategies to help students prepare for their science GCSEs
• Activities often involve a lecturing style of revising “content” or “death by past paper”
• Sometimes previous activities (which were not effective) are revisited
Year 11
• Students often lack the skills or motivation to revise effectively at home, consequently..
• Study leave for Year 11 students has been dramatically reduced
• Support materials (revision guides etc.) often concentrate on content, rather than strategies to address the barriers to success.
Questions
• Do you agree with the observations about GCSE revision?
• What are the “barriers to success”?
What are the barriers?• Students at the C/D borderline may not know
how to revise effectively at home, or have the opportunity or motivation.
• Students often lack the necessary technique in answering examination questions.
• Students are often disengaged after a year of coursework etc.
• Teachers often do not have access to a range of engaging strategies
Interactive Revision Strategies
Activities which:• help students develop the skills to answer
GCSE examination questions• help students revise more effectively• are designed to be interesting and engaging
• stimulate thought and encourage collaborative working
The Activities• Tasks to develop skills of interpreting:
graphstablesdiagramsquestion introductions
• Tasks to encourage different ways of using revision guides
• Tasks to help students develop a thinking strategy for answering examination questions
Task
Task
Response
• Teachers found the tasks useful. They selected activities suited to the students needs
• Some tasks do not suit all pupils
• Tasks need to be explained carefully
• Pupils responded well
Quotes• “..made me think”• “….very helpful….” • “I find it easier to learn now”• “It has made me revise more”• “I revise differently now. I use drawing
and revision cards”• “I know what revision is now!”• “It doesn’t have to be boring!”
Problem…..
• Teacher: “I would like you to try this new strategy. Draw a picture to represent all the key ideas from a page in your revision guide”.
• Pupil: “Then what do I do?”
• Teacher: “Then you revise it!”
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