Assessment & Effective Revision

Assessment

Each student at Budmouth will experience two Assessment Points each year. The Assessment Points allow students to showcase and celebrate what they know and identify any areas that need further development. In addition, we use the assessment outcomes to strategically plan subject specific intervention to help students know more and remember more over time.

Following each Assessment Point/Mock series, students will receive a report highlighting their attendance percentages, achievement points, subject attainment and their subject attitude to learning.

Effective Revision 

This is a very important time in the life of any student preparing for a variety of year group assessments, mocks or final course exams. In support, thorough revision is essential if students are to be successful in any examination.

We recommend that revision be completed over an extended period of time to be effective and give the best possible experience and outcome.

Our effective revision resources give instructional advice about the best ways for students to revise to effectively store and retrieve information, along with helpful tips and information for parents.

We have created an Effective Revision Google Classroom that all students have been invited to join. In support, subject teams will be uploading revision material directly onto their Google Classroom pages. Students will be able to access this using their Google Classroom accounts.

Once a fortnight students take part in a dedicated tutor session on effective revision strategies. These sessions help them build strong study habits and prepare confidently for assessments throughout the year. Ahead of exam periods, students receive a Guide to Effective Revision and Personalised Learning Checklists (PLCs) to support independent study and reinforce the techniques introduced in tutor time. Duering assessment points, student can choose to replace their normal homework tasks with the ‘Core 4 Effective Revision Techniques.’

Effective Revision Techniques – The Core 4

Doug Lemov states, ‘practice does not always make perfect, but it does make permanent.’ Students should have a bank of well-practised revision and study methods that they can confidently select from (Howell & McGill, 2022).

The Core 4: Flash Cards, Self-Quizzing, Mind-Maps and Brain Dumps have the greatest impact on retention.

Flashcards: A good flash card should contain all the KEY POINTS on a topic in a clear and concise way.  It should be a condensed version of whatever you have in your notes and you should be able to take in the information on the card at a glance. By transferring information from your notes to the card you are re-learning what you have covered in class.  This is because you have to put information in your own words and to do that you have to understand it!  A card should just have the key points on. It shouldn’t have loads and loads of detail.  If you come back to a cue card and you don’t understand it, use your more detailed class notes. In addition, you could write a word on one side and the definition on the other or question on one side and answer on the other. 

Leitner Method: Use this method to organise the retrieval practice of your flash cards.  It involves having three piles of cards ‘Everyday’, ‘Every three days’,  ‘Every week’.

• Test yourself on the knowledge on your cue cards. 
• The ones you do not get right put them in a pile (the everyday  pile). The ones you do get right put them in a different pile (every  three days pile).
• Review the ones you got wrong the next day. If you get them  wrong again, keep them in that pile. If you get them right, put them  in the ‘Every three day pile’.
• Three days later review the cards in the ‘Three day pile’; if you get  them wrong then move them back to the ‘Everyday’ pile. If you get  them right, move them to a new ‘Weekly’ pile.
• Repeat this process until the information is easier to retrieve

Self-Quizzing: ‘Look, Cover, Write, Check’ method.

• Look: Look at the content, read, re-read and memorise it, say it out loud if necessary (look, cover, chant), until you are confident enough to use your practice book to write it down.
• Cover: Close your knowledge organiser or cover up the section, it is important that you don’t look so you are testing your memory.
• Write: Now try to recall the knowledge by writing out the section from memory.
• Check: Open your knowledge organiser and look at the answer – tick the ones you got right and correct the ones you got wrong in a green pen. Do the ones you got wrong again, until you get them right.

Mind maps & Retrieval clocks: Use just keywords, or wherever possible images. Start from the centre of the page and work out. Make the centre a clear and strong visual image that depicts the  general theme of the map. Create sub-centres for sub-themes. Put keywords on lines. This reinforces the structure of notes. Print rather than write in script. It makes them more readable  and memorable. Lower case is more visually distinctive (and  better remembered) than upper case. Use colour to depict themes and to make things stand out. Anything that stands out on the page will stand out in your  mind. Use arrows, icons or other visual aids to show links  between different elements. Be creative. Creativity (powerskill) aids memory.

Brain Dump: Read a piece of text within a given time frame or self-quizzing content and recall as much information as possible from the text. A Braindump is the active revision alternative to writing notes. This is a very quick and effective technique. It is to test what you already remember, and which neural pathways are already strong. You then identify which information you didn’t remember and start building the normal pathways.