Revision Tips

What exams are coming up, like end of topic exams or literally like papers with all the content?

If its actual end of year style exams u should be doing past papers as well as textbook questions. If anything, focus more on past papers at this point (but still do both)

Chem and bio is deffo just memorising content though so yh just make sure you're doing enough hours of revision per day.... in fact how many hours r you doing right now

Ali Sami Farooq here, you can just solve the sample question paper regarding your topic. I just follow these tips to revise the topic.

Ever tried flash card apps like Anki? I feel like it's a decent way of retaining information about subjects with a lot of content. This would be more relevant to bio and chem rather than maths. Maths just comes with practising questions and making sure you understand the fundamentals of the topic.

But as the others have said above, exam questions are the best way to test out what you know and what you don't and then from there you can start taking action...

@ayaan

My personal tips is to use Active Recall + Spaced Repetition

Keep in mind, this is my opinion - not fact - I also haven't gone super in depth for the sake of time. But hopefully it can give you an idea of where to start...

Tools For Active Recall:

tip: keep it simple

tip: dont copy out the textbook, this is all about making tools for when you revisit the topic and the order you revisit it in.

1. Flashcards 
   1. Keep it simple when making flashcards 
      1. ONLINE:
         1. Anki -> automatically schedules based on how you rated your cards but you should make tags for each card
         2. Google sheets -> mark in green or red based on how you found it, this will be useful for spaced Repition later.....
      2. PHYSICAL CARDS:
         1. Keep it simple when making your cards
         2. We will mention a technique later on for once you have made the cards....
2. Blank sheet of paper + Spec 
   • Use the specification to guide you on the content you need to know 
   • Use your blank paper to write down what you remember, and then in a different colour write down what you cannot from your notes or the textbook. Put a * on stuff you found hard 
3. Mindmaps
   • This works in the same way as 2
4. Notes:
   1. You can either make one set of notes to refer to, then use technique 2 to write down what you can remember
   2. Make your notes in a question like style so that you can cover up the answers and do the questions and see if you got it right or not
   3. If you have already made notes which is basically from a textbook, you can still cover answers up and try see how much you can remember, you can combine this with technique 2
5. Past Paper Questions 
   • Ideally make a notepad full of tricky questions for each topic... this will be helpful when you are revising...

You are not done!

In order to retain info, you must now use spaced repetition to keep it in your brain otherwise it will slowly disappear.... 

Tools for Spaced Repetition

tip: Little but often

1. You can use a timetable to schedule what you should cover for the first time, as well as you need to revise over (using active recall)
   • within these sessions use the techniques mentioned above in the active recall 
2. If you have made flashcards in the right way, make sure you go over the hard ones first.   
   1. If you made cards in Anki:
      • Do the 'due now' ones 
      • Alternatively, use revise by tags
   2. If you made cards in Google Sheets
      • Do the cards which are in red first
   3. If you made cards by hand:
      • If you get a card right:
        • you will revisit it 1 day from then, then the second time extend it to 3 days and so on..
      • If you get a card wrong:
        • ideally revisit it asap. or schedule your recap to a closer date.
3. If you used a blank paper and the spec to revise:
   • Use the active recall techniques but this time start with the bits in red
4. If you did past paper questions:
   1. Before you do more past paper questions for that topic, flip through your tricky questions notes on that topic
   2. Add any more hard questions to your collection for tricky questions for topics

Thank you for providing the revision tips , the entire conversation is beneficial for me ~ Ali Sami Farooq

so for bio and chem, when you read over the textbook, make questions up in your head as you go and answer them. If you want, maybe even make questions up on paper and answer them with like model answers but try do as many exam questions as you can of course. 

For maths, as zeeshans been telling me since GCSE days, do lots of past papers. 

for me, notes do not really work for a levels, for GCSEs they did. There are notes available online as well as examQA too if you need to go over notes. 

One thing I always do for chem and bio is keep a copy of the spec with me just to make sure I cover everything and dont miss anything out. 

For bio try do wider reading because there will be questions testing wider knowledge and thing out of spec. The essay also requires out of spec information.