1. Straightaway, please consider: Would it be helpful for parents to:
Leave you to it, warning about living in a cardboard box if you don’t revise?
Confiscate your phone to stop you contacting their friends on Instagram?
Be around– not in the room, but pottering about nearby to provide a kind of non-intrusive monitoring?
Show an interest when they return from work and offer to test you or simply make you cups of tea?
Empathise rather than go on the attack? Even small remarks can aggravate fear, such as saying, “Have you looked at your timetable?” or, “Do you know what you need to revise?” 
Offer to help drafting a revision timetable?
Take charge of back room operations: Make sure you have a well-ordered, quiet workspace with all the Post-it notes and fluorescent pens you need?
Discuss removing your games console from your bedroom until exams are over?
Ask you what you want from them?
Ask “If I think you are not doing enough work, am I allowed to say anything and what’s a good time to say it?”
Check you know how to revise?

2. What is the significance of this number? 138
This is the number of hours revision possible if you did – 1 hour Mon-Thurs; 2 hours at weekend; 10 hours half term; 50 hours Easter.

3. 138 hours 1 hour each night Monday-Thursday (56)
2 hours each weekend (22)
10 hours February half term (10)
50 hours Easter holiday (50)

4. Easter Revision
I suggest that for at least 5 days a week over the Easter holiday, you work a school day:
Session 1 – 9:00-9:50
Session 2 – 10:15-11:05
Session 3 – 11:30 – 12:20
Session 4 – 1:15 – 2:05
Session 5 – 2:30 – 3:20

5. Timescales First exam is on 14th May
24 out of 54 exams before May half term – implications for revision
Study leave likely to begin Monday 21st May
Lessons and in-school revision optional thereafter.

6. Making the revision timetable
Revision Planning
Making the revision timetable

7. Principle 1: SPACED RETRIEVAL PRACTICE
When we learn something, we forget it
When we revisit something we’ve learned repeatedly, we remember it better
This is shown in the Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve

8. Principle 2: Interleaving vs blocking
“Blocking” your revision – focusing on one topic for a long time then moving on to the next topic – is inefficient.
“Interleaving” your revision is far more effective as reducing the accessibility of information in memory fosters additional learning of that information.

9. Principle 3: Interleaving and chunking
For interleaving to work, you have to break down your revision into “chunks”
It’s no good putting “Biology” into your revision calendar – you need to be specific
GCSE Biology includes:
Health
Responses to the environment
Evolution
Ecology
Cells
Photosynthesis
Organisms and their environments
Protein functions and uses
Respiration
Genetics
Speciation

10. Revision timetable Date/Session Revision GCSE Exams Mon 8th April 1
Geog: Coasts 2
RE: Christian marriage 3
Maths: quadratic equations 4
Eng Lit: Macbeth 5
Science: Forces

11. The importance of study breaks:
Study time periods should be broken down into minute sections with small rests in between.
We tend to remember first things and last things rather than the things in between. So the more well-spaced and short breaks we have, the more beginnings and endings we have, and the better our brain will be able to remember.
Brief breaks are also essential for relaxation: they relieve the muscular and mental tension that inevitably builds up during periods of intense concentration.

12. So…
Chunking
Planning
Break down the subjects you study into “chunks” you can revise
Plan an interleaved revision schedule to cover the chunks you have created
Build in rest breaks
Spaced retrieval

13. Revision planner apps:
My Study Plan (iOS) and Study Plan (Google Play). With My Study Plan, all you have to do is put in how many hours you want to spend on each subject, the date of your exam and how many hours you will revise for each day. The app will even work out how many hours you’ve worked for and how many you’ve got left to go.
Timetable is one way to manage school life across your devices. The app even mutes your phone during revision sessions, in case you forget... Available on: Play Store

14. Why reinvent the wheel? Half-term Week 2 22-2 Unseen poetry LOTF
Week 2
22-2
Unseen poetry
LOTF
Week 1
29-2
OMM
CP out
7-3
Writing - Leaflets
DDD? Writing - Reports
Writing - Reports
14-3
Reading Q1
DDD?
Reading Q2
Reading Q3
21-3
Reading Q4
Bank Holiday
Easter
11-4
18-4
VFTB
Lit mock: LOTF/VFTB
25-4
Mock feedback
Writing - articles
Writing – speeches/talks
Writing - reviews
2-5
Writing - letters
Reading recap
9-5
Lit recap
NOT IN
16-5
RE exam?
Biology exam?
Chemistry exam?
TBC
w/b 23-5
Lit Paper 1
Lit Paper 2

15. Day
Date T
28/2
French
Art
Vocational W
1/3
English Th
2/3
HSC
Geog
Drama
7/3
Maths
8/3 DT
Music
Spanish
9/3
Science
14/3
15/3
16/3
21/3
22/3
24/3
28/3
29/3
30/3
4/4
5/4
6/4
25/4
26/4
27/4
2/5
3/5
4/5

16. Would it be helpful for parents to:
Leave you to it, warning about living in a cardboard box if you don’t revise?
Confiscate your phone to stop you contacting their friends on Instagram?
Be around– not in the room, but pottering about nearby to provide a kind of non-intrusive monitoring?
Show an interest when they return from work and offer to test you or simply make them cups of tea?
Empathise rather than go on the attack? Even small remarks can aggravate fear, such as saying, “Have you looked at your timetable?” or, “Do you know what you need to revise?” 
Offer to help drafting a revision timetable?
Take charge of back room operations: Make sure you have a well-ordered, quiet workspace with all the Post-it notes and fluorescent pens you need?
Discuss removing your games console from your bedroom until exams are over?
Ask you what you want from them?
Ask “If I think you are not doing enough work, am I allowed to say anything and what’s a good time to say it?”
Check you know how to revise?