How to Avoid Burnout from GCSE Revision
Coaching students on effective revision for their GCSEs is often an underrated and overlooked part of tuition.
For a lot of students, revision isn’t anywhere near as impactful as it could be. It’s tiring, directionless, and ineffective.
I’ve gathered the most frequent advice I give to students to help them make revision sessions not only more purposeful but shorter too!
Create a Routine
The process of revising should be like a ritual. I don’t mean revising on the same day or at the same time, but the actual process of what you do when you revise should be structured. I need the same approach when I’m planning lessons or writing feedback; settling into that workflow frame of mind is exactly the same when revising. The idea is to drop into your routine and be in the headspace to tackle the task you are working on; once that workflow has started, stay committed to it.
I talked about this in my post about creating a study space but it’s worth mentioning timings again here. Short bursts of revision absolutely beat long, gruelling sessions. I have resources to help structure this (so sign up for your free link if you haven’t already!) but 25 minutes is the recommended time. I’d also say from experience that you can do anything between 20 and 30 minutes before it’s time for a break. Even if you feel like you can keep going, you need to let your brain process what you have been studying and get ready for the next burst. Take 5 minutes, move away from your study space, get a drink, and then come back for the next burst of revision.
But with so much to do and so many subjects to revise, how can you get everything done? There’s a really important step to make sure your revision session makes the most of every minute.
Have a Focus
I love a plan but there really is a fine balance to getting it right: too much can just be procrastination and avoiding doing the actual work or even lead to you feeling overwhelmed when faced with everything you need to get done between now and your exam. Personally, I’d be lost without a to do list and a focus for what I want to achieve each day.
So how do you get this right for GCSE revision?
Start with chunking up the subject into the main topics you will be tested on in the exam. Your teachers can definitely help you with this if you aren’t 100% sure and you may even have a break down of the topics available on your school website. These topics are the first stage of getting your revision focussed. Then, split this up into essential pieces of knowledge. A simple list of bullet points is perfect for this, and it doesn’t need to be detailed. Revision guides can also help here as they are already divided up into topics and the relevant info that you will need to study.
Using GCSE English Literature as an example, you can think of the topics as the texts you are studying and then split those into categories such as character, theme, context, etc. Having a really clear focus allows you to keep your revision session purposeful and stops you going off track.
And as a quick note: if you do find something new or something you don’t quite understand, don’t panic and don’t get distracted! Make a quick note and that piece of knowledge can be the focus for a future revision session.
Set a Target
Knowing where to start is great but knowing where to end is also important. How often have you actually thought about what you are aiming to achieve in your revision sessions? As always, I’ll stick to what I know for examples but having a really broad revision goal like ‘revise quotes’ or ‘study the plot’ isn’t as helpful as it could be. Let’s look at refining a clear revision goal for a study session:
- Revise 5 quotes (not bad)
- Revise 5 quotes from a specific chapter (better)
- Revise 5 quotes from a specific chapter for a specific character (good)
- Revise 5 quotes from a specific chapter for a specific character that focus on a specific theme (great!)
Now you have both a clear aim and some purposeful revision steps to work through: skim-reading the chapter, highlighting/writing the quotes, narrowing down the quotes to the 5 best/most useful, making annotations on how they link/show a theme. Perfect study session!
Even better, after your short break you can come back for the next short session and check your recall. Can you re-write the quotes from memory? Are there any more note annotations to add? What about writing a summary of what you have learned about the character from these quotes? Having a clear focus and goal helps to link your studying together and goes a long way to making all that hard work stick!
Get Revising!
I hope you’ve found this post useful and has given you something to help improve your revision routine. Please consider subscribing to my newsletter for more study tips and take a look at the upcoming workshops for even more support with your GCSE exams.