Teaching is the only job I have ever done. It is in my blood. I do moan about it from time to time, but the actual “teaching” part of my job is brilliant. Spending time with young people in the classroom is so rewarding. There is no greater reward for me that a pupil telling me that they enjoyed my lesson, or thanking me for helping them or watching them become really absorbed in a learning activity. That is what I love. That is why I teach.
In our education system, there is still an end-point where pupils have to sit public exams to demonstrate their knowledge and understanding, and after Easter, the teaching of my Year 11 and A level classes will become much more focused on preparing them for these exams. Revision is so important but tends to be thought of as a boring and tedious exercise. Children learn best when they are having fun – when they don’t actually realise that they are learning. The same is true of revision. The key to successful revision is making it enjoyable.
I have a lot of pupils who enjoy making beautiful, colour-coded spider diagrams of their revision notes, and whilst there is a place for this in revising for their exams, effective revision does have to be active. You need to test your learning, so you understand what you already know and remember, and what you need to focus on. Trying to replicate a spider-diagram from memory is a good way of doing this. As are flashcards for learning key definitions. I often get my pupils to make up quizzes for each other – that way they are revising as they are making up their questions and answers, and then being tested as they attempt the quiz that another child has made up for them.
Alternatively, Education Quizzes provide a huge range of quizzes for children all the way up from KS1 to GCSE. I was really impressed with the breadth of the curriculum content in the Biology section (which is my specialist subject), covering not only the topics needed for the GCSE exams across the examination boards, but also areas for “How Science Works”. It would certainly be a useful resource for me as a teacher to use as either a lesson starter, or a plenary at the end to test understanding of the work covered.
I have spoken to many parents during my 15 years of teaching who really want to help their children with their revision, but just don’t know where to start – especially in a subject that they didn’t study at school, or one that they weren’t particularly confident with. The great thing about Education Quizzes is that it covers a huge range of different subjects and all the quizzes are written by teachers. It costs £7.50 a month to access Education Quizzes and this can be cancelled at any time, so if you were the parent of a Year 11 child, you could pay £22.50 for your child to have access to all of the quizzes, attempting them as many times as they wanted during these next important 3 months. Each of the GCSE quizzes are made up of 10 questions, so a quiz can easily be slotted in to the odd 5 minutes here and there during the day, and can help break up revision sessions, keeping the brain alert. And because these quizzes are done online, your child will feel like they are playing games when they are actually doing some revision. It’s win-win all round!
The best revision is always done frequently – little and often really is best, and helping your child get into good habits as early on in their formal education is only going to benefit them in the long term. And if your child is sitting their GCSEs this summer, then I wish them lots of luck, but better than luck, is thorough preparation and revision!
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