If you’ve identified that you need to focus on 5 poems, ‘A Christmas Carol’, and Paper 1 Writing: Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Day 4 Day 5 Day 6 Day 7 Day 8 Day 9 Blocked practice  Spaced practice  Or, if you’re keeping track of your own revision already, you could ask yourself what you learned: Last lesson Last month (‘A Christmas Carol’) Last term (Poetry anthology) Whatever your approach – revisit your subjects/topics after a bit of time has passed.

This is the science behind why the Knowledge Organisers you were given are an effective means of learning. The best way of getting something to stick in your head is to repeatedly pull it out of your head!

Make and use flashcards Complete a Knowledge Dump (we’ll practise this when we look at interleaving) Complete practice papers

Scrooge was: “as hard and sharp as flint” and “as solitary as an oyster” Elaboration questions – examples! Why does Dickens use similes at all, rather than just saying he is hard and lonely? Could these similes describe any other fictional characters you can think of? Who could these similes describe from today’s society – any politicians/celebrities? Do you know anyone in your own life who’s like Scrooge in Stave 1? Could these similes be used to describe you at any point in your life? Do the ideas here about Scrooge relate to anything from the poetry anthology? Do the ideas here link to any of your other subject areas, e.g. RE? PSHE? Maths?

Basically – switch between topics whilst revising, and make connections between those topics. Practice now! Knowledge Dump (we mentioned this when looking at Retrieval Practice…) For a given topic: spend one minute writing down everything you know about it spend one minute discussing in small groups everything you all wrote down spend a third minute adding to your original notes, based on your discussions Do it for the poem ‘Remains’ Do it for the poem ‘War Photographer’ Do it for a comparison between ‘Remains’ and ‘War Photographer’

Spaced and interleaved    It’s important that you do this across subject areas, too. Changing the order in which you look at subjects/topics also helps. So, if you’re worried about English, Maths, and Science… Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 00-20 21-40 41-60 Blocked practice  Spaced practice  Spaced and interleaved   

Similes “hard and sharp as flint” receipts “fly our lives like paper kites” “a yellow hare that rolled like a flame” Thinking about devices across all texts will help you: Write about how/why devices are used in general Use devices more/better in your own writing You can do this with topics not just devices – e.g. gender across all texts, power across all texts… Metaphors I “released a songbird from its cage” “the hapless soldiers’ sigh runs in blood down palace walls” “time rolls its tanks” For these similes and metaphors, discuss what texts they’re from, and how/why they’ve been used.

Combine your notes and understanding with visuals to make them memorable. E.g. Complete a timeline of what the ghosts show Scrooge, and in what order. Or, take one of the poems, and identify key imagery and then depict them as images. I met a traveller from an antique land, Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand, Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown, And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command, Tell that its sculptor well those passions read Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things, The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed; And on the pedestal, these words appear: My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair! Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.”