What are some of the best revision techniques?

Hi, my name's Jean and when I went through my exams, I found a few different tools to help me to revise.

One of the ones I found particularly useful was mind maps.

A mind map is a tool that helps you set out all the key ideas in a topic and see how they are all linked.

And it is really useful if you want to have all the information summarised on one page.

So to get a better idea of how this works, let's give it a try!

First of all, you'll need a big sheet of paper and a pen.

And then you need to pick what topic you're doing, so for this example we'll use the causes of World War 2.

You just need to write that in the centre of your sheet of paper.

The next step is to start putting down some of the main ideas, concepts, key points or themes that you want to include.

You can get an idea of some of the big themes by looking back over your study notes, previous essays, assignments and handouts.

And you can have as many themes as makes sense to you.

For this example, let's use just four to keep it simple.

They are: depression, appeasement, Treaty of Versailles, expansionism.

So now it's time to add more details to the branches of your mind map.

Think of each idea like a little box which other ideas fit inside.

You can use this opportunity to add key facts like places, dates and names, or anything else related to your subject.

Treaty of Versailles might include: January 1919, 14 point plan, German responsibility for World War 1.

And you can do the same under each of the main areas.

Once you have the basic idea of how to create a mind map you can add more detail, and you can personalise it.

If you want to add in text, drawings or symbols, use different colours for each branch, or anything else—that's fine.

And you can use mind maps for any subject.

So, say you are studying ecosystems in Biology, and you wanted to create a mind map for that.

Then all you need to do is write ecosystems in the centre.

Then you'd go through your notes to find related topics that you want to include like: food chains, definitions, ecosystem types, and relationships.

And then you take one of those topics and add more detail—so under relationships you might put: predators, co-operation, competition, and biotic/abiotic.

And then you just do the same for each topic, until your mind map is complete.

So, mind maps can be a really useful tool to help you organise facts, figures and concepts—and the way they link together.

You could try pinning your mind map up on the wall, or making it the wallpaper on your desktop computer, or even the screensaver on your phone.

Just anywhere that you'll see it regularly and it'll help it stick in your mind.

Mind maps have been a really useful tool for me in the past, so why not give them a try?

They might help you too.

Hi – I'm Jean, and when I sat my exams, I found a number of different things to help me memorise important information.

Like me, you've probably got a ton of stuff to remember for your exams, and that can be pretty stressful.

So I'm here to tell you about three ways you can use words to help you remember ideas, concepts and facts.

They are: keywords, mnemonics, and acronyms.

So when you start to revise, you'll probably have textbooks, notes and handouts from your classes, which can amount to quite a lot of stuff.

But you can use keywords to focus this down into a few smaller ideas that summarise the larger idea.

Let me show you what I mean.

If the topic you are revising is climate change in Geography, you could start by reading through your notes and making a list of the key terms and phrases for the topic.

Noting the key terms down in a bulleted list is a really useful tool, as it helps you to organise your thinking around a topic or subject.

And you can always add more detail to each of these points too, and then you can do the same for the other bullets.

When it comes to memorising the content, you'll find that remembering the higher-level bullets can help you to remember the information that they contain too.

These lists can also make it really obvious if you haven't yet learnt a topic in enough detail— Do you know what that particular keyword means? If not—you've still got some work to do!

Another useful tool is mnemonics.

Mnemonics are a group of letters, words or ideas that help you remember something.

There are already a ton of these online like: Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain, to help you remember the colours in white light.

But if you can't find any online that suit you, then why not just create your own?

If you want to remember the treble clef notes on music lines, you could create a mnemonic using the first letter of each note in the line.

And that could give you: Every Green Bus Drives Fast, or Every Good Boy Deserves Football.

They're silly sentences, but because they create a picture in your head, they can be quite memorable.

A similar tool is the use of acronyms.

An acronym is an abbreviation of several words into a new pronounceable word.

You probably know a ton of them already: North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, Graphics Interchange Format, National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

And you can make up your own as well.

If you wanted to remember some of the causes of World War 2, you might include the Great Depression, Appeasement, the Treaty of Versailles, and Expansionism in Japan and Germany.

So that gives you: Depression, Appeasement, Versailles, and Expansionism, which equals D.A.V.E.Yes—DAVE caused World War 2!

There are a ton of different ways that you can use words to help remember information for your exams:

Creating bulleted lists of keywords and phrases

Using mnemonics by creating simple sentences to help you remember information

And creating acronyms by abbreviating words into new words

And if you can't find any online that suit your needs, then why not create your own?

Hi, I'm Jean and when I was studying for my exams, I found that using and recording sound really helped me to revise.

You know how sometimes you get a really catchy song stuck in your head?

In fact, sometimes you can't get it out of your head—no matter how hard you try.

Sound just has a way of getting stuck in there, so why not take advantage of this, by using sound to help you learn and remember facts, figures and concepts for your exams?

I'm going to talk to you about three ways that you can use sound to help you revise for your exams.

These are:

Recording your own audio notes to listen back to

Using songs and rhymes

Listening to podcasts

After you've written your notes down, you could also try recording them and then listening back to them later.

There are lots of ways to record audio—you can use the mic in your laptop or tablet, or use an app on your phone.

You're not looking for top-quality audio, just sound that's good enough for you to hear yourself clearly.

Once you've got the hang of recording, you need to decide what you're going to record.

You could record yourself reading through summaries you've made of your notes, run through a keyword list that you've created,record an essay you've written, or even try asking yourself a few questions to make you think about the answers when you listen back later.

The great thing about audio notes is that you can listen back to them pretty much anywhere.

As well as audio notes, you could also use songs to help you remember pieces of information.

If someone asked you what the 17th letter of the alphabet was, there's a pretty good chance that you'd start singing the Alphabet Song in your head and counting out the letters on your hands.

You learned that song years ago but you probably still remember it because it's set to a simple melody that's really familiar.

There are already a ton of songs out there online that have been created for specific subjects.

So why not have a search and see if you can find anything related to what you're studying?

If you can't find anything that suits you, however, then you can always create your own.

You can start off with simple melodies, like nursery rhymes or Christmas carols.

But you could even try working key facts and figures into your favourite songs.

Rhymes without music can work just as well—think of the "30 days hath September" rhyme.

If it helps you remember, it's doing its job.

Another really useful tool for revising is podcasts.

Podcasts are essentially an audio recording posted online that you can download to your phone, tablet or computer to listen to whenever you want.

I've used podcasts a ton and they were absolutely great.

There are podcasts out there on basically every subject, so they can be an excellent source of information.

You can use them for revision by listening to information on things you have already studied, refreshing your memory as you listen.

Or you could expand your knowledge of a subject by listening to new information, helping to broaden your general understanding.

So, next time you're learning a subject, why not try using sound to help you remember information?

(MOBILE VOICE RECORDING):

Try recording your notes to listen back to later.

Or why not create songs or rhymes to help you remember key facts?

Or listen to podcasts based around your specific subject.

These are all things that have worked for me, so why not give them a try—because they might work for you too.