1. Revision Techniques for A level students

2. It’s all about SPECS

3. SPECS See it Personalise it Exaggerate it Connect it Share it
See it….. is to pick on a topic by looking in notes, text book, revision guide etc
Personalise it…. Make notes or a poster, mind maps, spider diagrams
Exaggerate it……..Crocodiles only eat big numbers. Squirrels multiply. Tarzan adds up. Don’t just stick to metaphor. Make it visual! and kinaesthetic, rhyming couplets anything….

4. Connect it
How do you do this without just setting loads of past paper questions?
I use some of Susan Wall’s techniques.

5. This is a cut and stick exercise to sort out three approaches to solving quadratics. Rather than just giving them the three quadratics, give them the solutions and some of the working.

6. Other approaches Matching games Dominoes
Making giant posters, in pairs or groups, to show working and annotation with key points
All of these work well in pairs and groups

7. Filling in the gaps, or Cloze procedure is also valuable for building up structured answers for students .

8. Find the values of x such that fg(x) = gf(x)
gf(x) = _______ Do f first
fg(x)= gf(x) when
(3x+1)2 = ___________ Expand brackets
9x2 + ____ + ___ = _________ Simplify
6x2 + ______= 0 Factorise
_________________
x = ___ or x = _____ Solve
Some hints can be given at the side.

9. Consider using colour. Make notes on coloured pens and paper.
Use different colours for different topics.
Put formulae and key facts on coloured card on the classroom walls.
Encourage students to use coloured post-it notes in their files to mark questions to ask.

10. Share it Group discussion Raising problems
Identifying tricky bits and sorting them out
Asking questions

11. Get them Thinking!!!!
Make challenging statements that require justification, or force them to find a counter-example.
Make stupid comments like….. Force them to refute it

12. Classroom culture
Create an expectation in the students that nothing should be accepted or learnt without understanding
Demand that they can always explain and justify their own solutions
Encourage argument

13. Encourage them to interrupt and to challenge you
Encourage them to interrupt and to challenge you. Stroppy and demanding students learn more than passive ones