Structuring Your Revision Sessions

The Memory Clock is an easy-to-learn revision routine designed to help students structure their time in such a way as to make revision focused and productive. The three memorable steps below outline how to best spend one hour of revision!

How prepared are you to learn checklist. Have you eaten breakfast? Have you got all the equipment you need? Ho you have anything to check with your teachers? Have you switched your mobile off? Have you completed your homework? Have you had a good night's sleep? Have you set your learning goals?

Step 1 – Review material

It’s important to review the topic which typically begins with locating notes, past work and books. When you are reviewing a topic area this should take a quarter of the time you have allocated to revise e.g. if you are revising for 1 hour then 15 minutes revision is fine. See below for the top revision techniques to support reviewing material.

Step 2 – Practice exam questions

As the saying goes, practice makes perfect. Therefore, we encourage all students to ensure that each revision period contains ample opportunity for them to practice what they are likely to face when they are assessed. This is the time when you should practice exam questions to check if you can apply the material you have reviewed to exam questions. This should take up half the time allocated to revision. So in 1 hour it would be 30 minutes.

Step 3 – Check your progress

It is really important to get feedback on the accuracy of practice work. This is when you mark the questions and see what areas you are good at and what you need more time revising.

IMPORTANT you should now update your revision timetable so that you know what you need to revisit soon and what can wait to be revisited (see the spaced retrieval section for why this is important)