Revision Activities

There are three key things that you should bear in mind during revision:

• Revision should be an active process, simply reading and re-reading old notes is not the best way to get the information into your head
• The best way to remember something is to make it your own. It may be hard to remember whether or not your best friend likes, for example, cheese but it is easy to remember whether or not you do. In fact, you don’t need to remember at all: it’s just obvious. No one stands in front of a block of cheese thinking: ‘Hmm … now do I like cheese or not? I can never remember. Oh well, here goes.’ You don’t need to ask that question because you just know. It’s the same with English, if you have your own view about a poem, play or novel then you will remember it because it’s yours but if you are trying to remember my view then that will be very much harder.
• The best resource you have for revision is each other: work together, test each other, challenge each other, mark each other’s work. Collaborating in this way will help both of you do better

Bearing these three things in mind, here are some activities to help you revise:

On your own:

1. Re-write and re-order your notes rather than just reading over them.

2. Convert written notes into pictures, diagrams, brainstorms, character webs, etc

3. Brainstorm key moments / motifs / themes from a text

4. Re-read poems or important scenes from the play or novel and devise your own Organising Principles for them.

5. Get blank copies of the texts and track them again to see if you notice any different now that you are at the end of your course

6. Practise writing timed plans for different questions on each text. Give yourself 10 minutes per question and come up with a series of main points and quotations you will use as evidence.

7. Write director’s notes for a scene from a play, novel or poem. How would you use setting, lighting, action, movement to convey the message of the poem?

In groups:

1. Pair up with a friend and write an essay about the same question and then mark each other’s work using the Essay Checklist on this page.

2. Divide a text up into sections within a group and set each other quizzes on each section. The quiz writers will get to know their section of the text really well and their questions will help draw the attention of everyone else to important points in their section

3. Similarly devise quotation quizzes for each other so that you can practise identifying, locating and remembering key quotations from the texts which will save you having to look them up in the exam.

4. In pairs devise 5 or 6 essay questions for each other and get your partner to produce quick 10 minute plans for each question. The plans should outline 5 or 6 main points that could be made and the quotations that might be used as evidence to support them. Discuss these as a pair – did the answerer make the same points as the question setter?

5. In pairs jointly write introductions or main body paragraphs in response to essay questions. Then write paragraphs separately and swap and mark them.