Developing a revision mindset

Agatha is in Year 10. She is finding her GCSE subjects too hard. Just as she comes to terms with one concept, a new one is presented to her and she struggles to understand them. She does her homework as best as she can while also juggling dance lessons and competitions. She has decided that Chemistry is undoable for her while History is the only subject where she feels she can achieve. She doesn’t revise at home because she simply does not have time and when she does get 30 minutes here or there, she would rather read a book or chat with her friends. When it comes to assessments, she tries to do well but her best never seems good enough. She is feeling dejected and is not looking forward to Year 11 when talk of The Exams will begin in earnest.

This blog post is not about whether we should have formal exams or about the fact that there may be too much content to get through in the Curriculum. It is not even about the purpose or accessbility of homework (although feel free to read all my posts on the subject. Also, I have a book on it coming out this year!).

This blog post is about how we, as teachers, can help students like Agatha achieve well and feel confident in themselves in terms of their learning.

In the scenario, Agatha found it difficult to grasp concepts, particularly as new conepts are being taught before the previous ones are secure. She also found assessments tricky and demotivating. The more she struggles, the more she decides the subject simply isn’t for her.

This is natural. We focus our energy and attention on things where we know we have a chance of success, and disregard the things where we may fail due to past experiences.

Now, let us look at Agatha’s Chemistry teacher’s perspective:

Dr C has carefully thought about the sequencing of her explanations and the questions students will answer to process the new concepts. She has designed homework that ensures students are practising retrieval weekly whilst also asking questions from past topics in the classroom. When it comes to assessments, she is exasperated when she marks Agatha’s paper. It seems none of the work she has put in has worked for her as she has left a number of questions blank and the ones she has answered are lacking in detail or the right terminology. It is very obvious that Agatha has not revised at all for this test. What is she going to do to prepare this student for her GCSE exams?

Dr C is clearly working very hard to ensure her students succeed in Chemistry but, as we have seen, students like Agatha use their past experiences to determine the amount of effort they are willing to put in.

There are small, quick fixes that Dr C can make. She can force students to revise for an assessment by setting a revision homework. Or she can plan revision lessons prior to the test so she can control what her students focus on. She can make revision checklists and revision videos and revision booklets and hold revision sessions at lunchtimes and talk about revision often and Agatha is simply going to look at it all and think ‘ahhhhhhhhhhhhh’.

I am not saying that those things aren’t useful at all. I still do a lot of those things and talk about the importance of independent study. But they work best if there is a mindset of revision from Day 1 (see Dawn Cox’s blogs on this).

There are a few things I have been trialling to build a revision mindset and deep thinking from the start. In this post, I will share one that is a simple addition to my mini-whiteboard questioning routine.

I use mini-whiteboards often in the classroom, for both short-answer questions and for extended writing practice. When I use MWBs for the latter, it is obvious to students how this method can be used for revision. But using it for extended writing is most useful once I am few lessons in, once students know enough about a topic to write sufficiently about it. Developing a revision mindset needs to start earlier than that and needs to permeate the lesson.

When using MWBs for short-answer questions, I encourage students to justify their answers. For example:

I pose this question to the class: Which type of radiation could be stopped by my hand?

The answer is ‘alpha’ and most students can provide this answer soon after an explanation on the topic. But when using MWBs, some students may be guessing (they have a choice of three types of radiation, after all) or notice someone in front of them writing the letter ‘a’ and work out which is the correct answer. One way to avoid this is to use the Pritesh Raichura’s excellent Heads Down, Fist on Head method of questioning. However, I want to also help students see that even when answering quick, short-answer questions, I want them thinking.

Once I pose my question, I ask students to also justify or add relevant detail to their answer. If they are guessing, I ask them to add a question mark to their answer. By doing this, students are:

• demonstrating their thinking. I can then correct or guide as needed.
• linking one-word/short responses to reasoning, which helps them when the question is reversed
• admitting when they are unsure so we can take steps to fix that uncertainty and develop confidence

This technique is also useful when posing multiple choice and True/False questions. There have been too many times when students have simply answered these with either surface-level thought or none at all.

This is only one small change I have made to my usual practice but it helps my students to continually consider questions as part of their learning and not as an activity that they need to mindlessly follow.

A revision mindset and culture takes time, effort and thought to establish but also to sustain for the long-term. Learning, after all, is not a one-off process that happens in an hour- it is on-going.