The Student Room Group

When should I start revising?

Hi! I started Year 11 in September & I'm now starting to think about revision & when I should start properly revising. Some of my friends have started revising for all subjects & some teachers have told us to revise which makes me feel so bad, I should probably start but I'm so overwhelmed that I don't really know when to. When would you say is the best time to start revising? I've got flashcards & other revision materials still from last year & I've been revising for all tests this year but I just don't know what to do about when to start properly revising for all subjects, any advice would be much appreciated. Thank you :smile:
Revise now! Take a small amount of time (maybe half an hour) at the end of each day to just remember what you've learnt, and revise a couple months before each test (revision timetables are a lifesaver for this) i suggest you watch some of revision with eves videos on youtube on ways you can organise your time.
Original post by Lydia.Mx
Hi! I started Year 11 in September & I'm now starting to think about revision & when I should start properly revising. Some of my friends have started revising for all subjects & some teachers have told us to revise which makes me feel so bad, I should probably start but I'm so overwhelmed that I don't really know when to. When would you say is the best time to start revising? I've got flashcards & other revision materials still from last year & I've been revising for all tests this year but I just don't know what to do about when to start properly revising for all subjects, any advice would be much appreciated. Thank you :smile:


Hello hello! First off, well done for being so diligent! Its really good that you're already conscious of this sorta stuff! So ,what I'm gonna tell you about when to start/how to start is my own experience so I hope thats okay, but everything works differently for different people! I actually ended up running revision for others in my year and the year below because of the amount I managed to learn.

However, compared to most people on TSR my GCSE grades weren't actually very impressive, but the main thing is that I ended up going up a lot of grades!

Spoiler


Organisation
If you're feeling overwhelmed that completely understandable, there are so so many exams to do in GCSE that its hard to feel at ease, but thats alright, let me tell you what I did and maybe you'll get some ideas. Planning will defo help your feeling of being overwhelmed! :smile:

Okay so the day after I got my mock results back in December I went home (cried) and then spent until early January going through the syllabi for each of my subjects and making a comprehensive checklists of every single little subtopic for each topic for each exam for each subject. By the time I was finished it was something like 20 pages long! They looked a little like this (though Biology was my most simple one, its just a good illustration! :smile: )
revi.png

I printed them off blank and scheduled them in pencil so I could change them easily (which I did!). I got myself a big wall calendar (the kind with the big squares) and wrote the topic I needed to study that day on the postit and stuck it to the calendar so they could be easily moved.

So what time scale are we thinking?

December - January : Researching exactly what is on the exam and roughly timetabling it
January-February: Start making revision resources you can use later - now is your time to get creative and make great stuff for yourself
March- The exam period : Start using those resources to revise and review and do practice papers! Practice, Practice, Practice!

Best of luck! You can do it! It's hard but you will make it and this time next year it will be nothing but a cleared obstacle! :smile:
Reply 3
I think it depends on the subject, maths needs to be done after every class as it builds on each other, things like English Language can be done over time, I kicked mine up to speed last January for the June exams.

You can prep your revision stuff after every class and have it ticking over nicely. If you want to revise then do, just a little bit every day, you don't need to kick it up to speed until January time in my opinion. After then you will need a revision plan, and spend hours on it. Obviously if you have lots of subjects with specific information to learn then you are going to have to do a revision time table now and start earlier.
Reply 4
im in year 11 too and i have already started revising for my exams the earlier the better.
Reply 5
Original post by Tiger coops
Revise now! Take a small amount of time (maybe half an hour) at the end of each day to just remember what you've learnt, and revise a couple months before each test (revision timetables are a lifesaver for this) i suggest you watch some of revision with eves videos on youtube on ways you can organise your time.


Thanks for your advice, I've got mocks coming up in the next couple of weeks (maths, English & Spanish) so I'll be revising for them anyway but I'm going to start going over things for maybe 30-1hr like you said. Yeah I should really make a revision timetable! Ah yes I love revision with Eve so I definitely will be! :smile:
Reply 6
Original post by slurredsquash
Hello hello! First off, well done for being so diligent! Its really good that you're already conscious of this sorta stuff! So ,what I'm gonna tell you about when to start/how to start is my own experience so I hope thats okay, but everything works differently for different people! I actually ended up running revision for others in my year and the year below because of the amount I managed to learn.

However, compared to most people on TSR my GCSE grades weren't actually very impressive, but the main thing is that I ended up going up a lot of grades!

Spoiler


Organisation
If you're feeling overwhelmed that completely understandable, there are so so many exams to do in GCSE that its hard to feel at ease, but thats alright, let me tell you what I did and maybe you'll get some ideas. Planning will defo help your feeling of being overwhelmed! :smile:

Okay so the day after I got my mock results back in December I went home (cried) and then spent until early January going through the syllabi for each of my subjects and making a comprehensive checklists of every single little subtopic for each topic for each exam for each subject. By the time I was finished it was something like 20 pages long! They looked a little like this (though Biology was my most simple one, its just a good illustration! :smile: )
revi.png

I printed them off blank and scheduled them in pencil so I could change them easily (which I did!). I got myself a big wall calendar (the kind with the big squares) and wrote the topic I needed to study that day on the postit and stuck it to the calendar so they could be easily moved.

So what time scale are we thinking?

December - January : Researching exactly what is on the exam and roughly timetabling it
January-February: Start making revision resources you can use later - now is your time to get creative and make great stuff for yourself
March- The exam period : Start using those resources to revise and review and do practice papers! Practice, Practice, Practice!

Best of luck! You can do it! It's hard but you will make it and this time next year it will be nothing but a cleared obstacle! :smile:


Wow!! Firstly thank you for all you're help, I know it's going to really help & I really appreciate you taking the time and effort to help me!! It's amazing how you helped run revision for people in your year and in the year below, you must work so hard!!! I admire you :smile:
Your grades are incredible, I will be very happy if I ended up with ones like yours in August! It's also reassuring to see how you can improve your grades even just by one if mocks don't go as well as you hoped! It's also reassuring to know that it's okay to feel overwhelmed, everyone else seems to have their life in check at the moment! I definitely need to be more organised so I will be doing what you said to! It's actually a really good idea to go through your syllabus and do that, it's something I wouldn't have thought of doing so I will definitely be doing this - thanks for also attaching an example :smile:) That's a great idea, I shall be investing in a wall calendar!
Thanks for also leaving a rough time scale - I know it'll really help me, I will be trying to stick to it as much as possible, I mean I've got three mocks coming up in a week or so so I've been revising for them but I know I need to do more! It's also good to know it worked for you & you ended up with great grades so fingers crossed!
Thank you so much, I really hope so! Haha yeah that's true! I hope whatever your doing now is going well :smile: Thanks again for all your help, I really really appreciate it!!! :smile:
Reply 7
Original post by Purdy7
I think it depends on the subject, maths needs to be done after every class as it builds on each other, things like English Language can be done over time, I kicked mine up to speed last January for the June exams.

You can prep your revision stuff after every class and have it ticking over nicely. If you want to revise then do, just a little bit every day, you don't need to kick it up to speed until January time in my opinion. After then you will need a revision plan, and spend hours on it. Obviously if you have lots of subjects with specific information to learn then you are going to have to do a revision time table now and start earlier.


Okay, yeah we usually write flashcards after ever lesson or after every topic and then revise or every now and then in the lesson anyway. Oh right, I think that's what I'll do as I don't want to end up burning myself out so I'll just do some every night - only 1hr or so depending on how much homework I've got to do and go from there. Saying that quite a few of my subjects have a lot of information that's needed but as I've got mocks coming up, I'll be revising for them anyway! Thanks for all your advice, I hope your studies are going well! :smile:
Reply 8
Original post by k0zaf
im in year 11 too and i have already started revising for my exams the earlier the better.


Ahh that scares me haha so many people seem to be but I've had so much homework and coursework and then revising on top of that for end of unit tests that I haven't had the time to properly start! What subjects are you doing? When are your mocks? Good luck this year, I'm sure you'll smash it!! :smile:
Original post by Lydia.Mx
Hi! I started Year 11 in September & I'm now starting to think about revision & when I should start properly revising. Some of my friends have started revising for all subjects & some teachers have told us to revise which makes me feel so bad, I should probably start but I'm so overwhelmed that I don't really know when to. When would you say is the best time to start revising? I've got flashcards & other revision materials still from last year & I've been revising for all tests this year but I just don't know what to do about when to start properly revising for all subjects, any advice would be much appreciated. Thank you :smile:


Start now, why not?
Reply 10
Original post by 12ksmith
Start now, why not?


Haha okay - thank you. I think that's what I will be doing anyway as I've got mocks coming up in the next couple of weeks till December and then some in late January! Saying that I don't want to burn myself out especially as I get stressed easily.
(edited 6 years ago)
Original post by Lydia.Mx
Haha okay I think that's what I will be doing anyway as I've got mocks coming up in the next couple of weeks till December & then January, saying that I don't want to burn myself out!


If I was you I would revise full on now for the mocks. Then take Christmas off (just doing hw or whatever) then when you go back to school start revising again). That break should mean you won’t burn out. I sat my GCSEs last year. I felt that once I got into a routine revision became a lot less strenuous as it just became my normal - meaning I didn’t get burned out after Christmas.

Good luck :smile:
Reply 12
Original post by 12ksmith
If I was you I would revise full on now for the mocks. Then take Christmas off (just doing hw or whatever) then when you go back to school start revising again). That break should mean you won’t burn out. I sat my GCSEs last year. I felt that once I got into a routine revision became a lot less strenuous as it just became my normal - meaning I didn’t get burned out after Christmas.

Good luck :smile:


Okay I shall, I think that's going to be the best idea. Okay, that's true. Oh cool, I hope they all went well! I hope it'll be like that for me then and that I'll just get used to it so it won't cause too much stress. Thank you & thanks for your advice. I hope everything's going well for you this year whatever you're doing! :smile:

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