Contents Page

Contents Page

Chapter 1: Revision Preparation and Management
1.1 Mindset Preparation……………………………………... 2
1.2 Motivation and dealing with stress………………3-4
1.3 Revision Schedule and Organization…………….5-8
1.4 Healthcare……………………………………………………….9

Chapter 2: Revision Methods & Memory Exercises
2.1 Short Introduction……………….…………………………10
2.2 Flashcards…………………………………………….……11-12
2.3 Poems/Raps…………………………………………………...13
2.4 Study Buddies…………………………………………………14
2.5 Active Revision……………………………………………….15
2.6 Study, Rest and Test……………………………………….16
2.7 Exam Practise…………………………………………………17
2.8 Memory Exercises………………………………………….18

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Chapter 1.1: Mindset Preparation

One of the most important rules in achieving your exam success and anything in life, is to
have the will to do it. After this, everything becomes very easy. You can watch a ton of
motivational videos and read whole books of motivational quotes but what you really need to
do is to tell yourself that from this very moment, I will exert all my efforts to achieve my
goals and attain that success. You can hear all the advice you want from everyone, but
nothing will change unless you accept to do so.

With regards to revision you need to be consistent throughout. One day you may have a
sudden burst of energy to do well and achieve top grades but suddenly your motivation drops.
This is normal. But what you need to do is to take steps to ensure that you are remaining
determined throughout and being regular with your study right up until your exams. One
important way to do this is to start off knowing what you want to achieve. Aim for the
highest and continue reminding yourself what it is you are working towards. You are doing
all of this in order to achieve those top grades, so you can have a well-established career and
have a healthy income. Also, not forgetting the harm of becoming the shame of the family if
you do not become a doctor or a lawyer.

Think positively. Convince yourself that you can achieve, and you will do exactly that. You
may have failed in the past but now is the time to rectify your mistakes and smash your
exams. Attaining the top marks and getting those top grades may seem difficult and even
impossible, but guess what? You can do it! Ignore and if possible avoid those who tell you
that you cannot do it. Are they the ones who are going to be sitting your exams for you? Do
not let others put a bar on your potential success.
A famous quote by Tim Notke made famous by the Basketball player Kevin Durant says,
“Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.”
Another quote by Stephen King says, “Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the
talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.”

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Chapter 1.2: Motivation and dealing with stress

Having a group of friends/study buddies is a definite-must towards staying motivated during
your revision period. They will also highly preferably be doing the same work as you. This
will help you avoid feeling lonely and you will look forwards towards your next study
session rather than dreading it. It is very important to surround yourself with those who have
a positive attitude and aim high as you will inevitable mirror the actions of those around you.
So, if you are staying with people who are lazy and do not work hard then you will also be
lazy and you will lack in working hard. On the other hand, if you are surrounded by those
who are productive and aim high then this will surely show on your attitude and your grades!

To have a comfortable and stress-free revision time, you should ensure you thoroughly plan
out your revision. Contrary to common belief, it will not cut it, piling up your workload and
revising on the last minute just make it easy for yourself and be organised. This will be
covered before your exams. This will bring a ton of anxiety on your shoulders and you will
feel overwhelmed. So, give yourself some easy and be organised, this will be covered in more
detail in one of the following subchapters.

Also, regarding you revising hard, you need to ensure you maintain a healthy balance
between relaxing and tough work. You must not become revision zombies/robots. Failing to
do so will result in a catastrophe for your mental wellbeing. So, allocate time within your
timetable for some me-time. This can be maybe going out to the park with your friends or
going on a family outing to the city for a nice meal. It is also highly advisable for you to
make good use of this time. Even though you are relaxing, try to incorporate something that
is beneficial for your time and avoid that which will waste your time. A good example of
something you could do is to go swimming which would bring physical benefits for you and
would even help you with your studies.

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Stress is something you cannot avoid but what you can do is take steps to allow yourself to
minimise it as much as possible. Do not overwork yourself. Yes, strive towards achieving the
best but do not push yourself over the limit and what you are not capable of doing. Take it
easy and build up your progress.

If you are feeling that you are overwhelmed doing revision, then do not be afraid to take
breaks. Maybe have some snacks with you to relax and motivate yourself within these breaks
and even to reward yourself when you complete a certain section, topic, set of equations that
you have learnt, etc.

Your mental well-being is far more important than your grades by far, any day! Keep
yourself in good environments. Do not keep yourself lonely. By doing this you are likely to
feel overwhelmed. It is the nature of humans to socialise. Also, do it a bit of experimenting of
what works for you. Maybe you work better in a library than in your bedroom. Or maybe you
find that you are more productive in working in a park. Find what is right for you!

Something that may help you is keeping a collection of motivational quotes around you or
watching motivational speeches. You may be able to turn to these when you are feeling low
on energy and need a boost. You can also set these around your study area to give you that
extra push to continue.

Do not be afraid to seek help whether it is with your teachers, parents, friends, counsellor, etc
with regards to your stress or something that you are finding difficult. It will only make
things worse if you keep your problems to yourself which will grow inside you and you will
make a mountain out of a mole hill.

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Chapter 1.3: Revision Schedule and Organization

It is a vital that you are organised and create a schedule for your revision all the way up until
your exams. This will make it very easy for you to understand how to complete all the
content and how you can come back and regularly revise it to maintain a firm understanding
of it. It will also help you allocate time to different topics and subjects to allow you to
complete a huge workload with ease. Some people may also have loads of exams across
different subjects in a short time period, without organising yourself, you will be all over the
places trying to juggle around with all this study and are very likely to breakdown. A
successful timetable will incorporate time where you cover the content, test yourself and
come back and strengthen the content in your mind.

I advise making two types of timetables.

NOTE: You may adjust the timetables slightly to fit in subjects/topics better, for example,
you may have big topics which you want to cover on the weekend. However, it is important
that you still maintain a general structure in order to maintain a generally, evenly-distributed
structure of revision. Also, to fit in your own family/social time.

TIMETABLE NUMBER ONE: This should be a general weekly/monthly timetable. Here
you should equally allocate time for each subject. A useful way to do this is allocate hourly
slots. This will make sure you are getting a good distribution of revision time across all your
subjects which is very important. Here is a demonstration on how you can create a timetable.
So, let us say that you are doing GCSE’s and you are doing 10 subjects which include:
Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Maths, Geography, English Language, English Literature,
French, Sociololgy and IT.

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An example of a weekly timetable incorporating these subjects can be made the following
way:

Mon Tue Wed
08:00: School 08:00: School 08:00: School
09:00: School 09:00: School 09:00: School
10:00: School 10:00: School 10:00: School
11:00: School 11:00: School 11:00: School
12:00: School 12:00: School 12:00: School
13:00: School 13:00: School 13:00: School
14:00: School 14:00: School 14:00: School
15:00: School 15:00: School 15:00: School
16:00: Rest 16:00: Rest 16:00: Rest
17:00: Biology 17:00: Physics 17:00: Geography
18:00: Rest 18:00: Rest 18:00: Rest
19:00: Chemistry 19:00: Maths 19:00: English Language
20:00: Exercise 20:00: Rest 20:00: Rest
21:00: Dinner 21:00: Dinner 21:00: Dinner
22:00: Light note reading 22:00: Light note reading 22:00: Light note reading
23:00: Sleep 23:00: Sleep 23:00: Sleep
00:00: Sleep 00:00: Sleep 00:00: Sleep

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Thu Fri Sat / Sun

08:00: School 08:00: School 08:00 Rest

09:00: School 09:00: School 09:00: Rest

10:00: School 10:00: School 10:00: Biology/English Language

11:00: School 11:00: School 11:00: Rest

12:00: School 12:00: School 12:00: Chemistry/English Lit

13:00: School 13:00: School 13:00: Lunch

14:00: School 14:00: School 14:00: Read a book

15:00: School 15:00: School 15:00: Physics/French

16:00: Rest 16:00: Rest 16:00: Rest

17:00: English Literature 17:00: Sociology 17:00: Maths/Sociology

18:00: Rest 18:00: Rest 18:00: Rest

19:00: French 19:00: IT 19:00: Geography/IT

20:00: Exercise 20:00: Rest 20:00: Rest

21:00: Dinner 21:00: Dinner 21:00: Dinner

22:00: Light note reading 22:00: Light note reading 22:00: Light note reading

23:00: Sleep 23:00: Sleep 23:00: Sleep

00:00: Sleep 00:00: Sleep 00:00: Sleep

/ = Division between Saturday and Sunday
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TIMETABLE NUMBER TWO:
This needs to be a specific timetable regarding your individual subjects. You need to plan out
how you will be able to cover all the topics for a specific subject and how you will return to
the subject to maintain a firm strength in its content.

So, let’s say for Biology you have 10 topics: Topic 1, Topic 2, Topic 3, etc.

You have 35 weeks in an academic year until your Biology exams (excluding your summer
holidays and including other holidays. May differ from country to country.)

Let’s also say it takes you on average 2 weeks to complete a topic in Biology following the
timed structure in timetable 1. This means that it would take you 20 weeks to cover the entire
content of Biology. 35-20 is 15, so, now you have 15 weeks left until your exam. In these 15
weeks you should work on coming back to the topics and testing yourself on your knowledge.
What you may want to do is do weekly exams on each topic to find out your weak points and
quickly go over them for the first ten weeks. Then on the last 5 weeks do a lot of exam
practise.

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Chapter 1.4: Healthcare- Sleep- Food- Exercise

As obvious as it may seem, it must be said. It is extremely important to take care of your
health which you may have to pay extra care to during exams. Taking care of your body is
not only a benefit in of itself but it will also help you get the optimal benefit from your
revision time. If you are pay little attention to your physical and mental wellbeing, then this is
going to surely show on your exams. In fact, taking care of your health takes a major
precedence of your exams in the first place. Your body will be weak and will be unable to
support you in coping with the workload that you have.

Food: If you are feeding yourself with constant junk food then your mental health and
physical health would be at risk. You will constantly feel stressed and down which will
demotivate you to spend time in doing revision. You will also feel very weak and tired which
will make studying a very stressful experience. On the other hand, eating good will help you
feel energetic and motivated towards getting those top grades! Drink plenty of water, staying
well hydrated and eat foods which will give you a healthy energy level like, Avocados,
Almonds, Bananas and Oatmeal which is a nice, simple, filling breakfast.
Sleep: Not getting enough sleep will make you feel tired and will harm your health. Your
memory will also be weak which will not benefit you in your studies. This will also
demotivate you to do your work. Getting a good amount of sleep will refresh your body and
enhance your ability to take the most from revision.
Exercise: It would also be of great benefit if you can fit exercise in to your schedule. It helps
you relieve stress that may be piling up on you and it helps the functioning of your body.
Improving your ability to do good in your work and to build up on more mental stamina. It
would also help you feel better, motivating you to do well in your exams.

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Chapter 2.1 Short introduction to Revision Methods

With regards to these revision methods, you may pick and choose to which fits best for you
depending on your situation and how you work. Experiment through all these different ones
to see which ones are the most beneficial to you, you don’t have to use all of them and you
don’t have to limit yourself.
There are two types of revision and you would need to implement both to have a successful
study period. Sit down revision and on the go revision. Sit down would include using a high
amount of concentration and effort to go over the content of the subject. This would be
especially when you are new and trying to familiarise yourself with it. On the go is when you
are just quickly going over something in a time when you are free like on a journey. This is
just to get a light coverage of the content which will help you strengthen/maintain your
knowledge of the content and quickly go over your weak points.

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Chapter 2.2: Flashcards

A classic method of revision. They key to this method is writing only the IMPORTANT
INFORMATION down. If you overload your card with information, then it will become
harder for you to retain the information. This will make it easier for you to remember the
content of the cards. A useful tip would be to write a question on one side of the card and the
answer with notes on the other side of the card.

Here is an example of how you would convert a piece of information onto a flash card. Make
sure you highlight key words and information.

LONG CHUNK OF INFO:
Plants use glucose in 5 main ways. One of these way’s is respiration. In this way the plant
gets its energy from glucose. The plant then uses the left-over glucose to convert into other
substances needed. Another way is to make Cellulose. Glucose is changed into cellulose
which is needed to make strong cell walls. A third way is for the storage of starch. Starch is
produced from Glucose and stored in the plant in its roots, stems and leaves for use in times
like the dark when photosynthesis is not occurring. Starch is better for storing than Glucose
as it is insoluble, and the cell would not draw in loads of water and swell up. A forth way is
the production of amino acids. Glucose and nitrate ions join to make amino acids which are
then made into proteins. The fifth way is for storage of Glucose as lipids (oils and fats) which
are kept in the seeds as storage.

This would be way too much information to put on a flashcard and will lead to memorising
less. For effective memorisation, you need to condense in a way that is better for you.

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CONDENSED FLASH CARD…

How do Plants use Glucose?
Name 5 ways.

1) Glucose Energy

Useful substances

2) Glucose Cellulose Cell walls

3) Glucose Starch (storage)

4) Glucose+ Nitrate Ions Amino Acids Proteins

5) Glucose Lipids (storage in seeds)

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Chapter 2.3: Poems/Raps

It would be very useful if you were to find creative ways to study. This would allow you to
retain more information from your study/revision periods. One great way to do this is to turn
your revision into poems/raps especially those which rhyme as these are more memorable.
This would be a fun way of spending your time and being productive as you are preparing for
your exams. Do not spend too much time making the poem as you have other things to do
and a simple one would do the job. However, if you would like to spend more time, you can
extend time in your schedule to make high quality poems and raps for a range of topics. A
great alternative could be stories especially helpful if you are covering a huge piece of
content.

A DEMONSTRATION:
White Blood Cells defend the body against pathogens by:
-Engulfing and Digesting the pathogen
-Producing antibodies which mark the pathogen on its antigen
-Producing antitoxins which neutralise the toxins from the Pathogen

Now here is a quick poem that was created which is not the best, but it is sufficient for
quick revision:
“Engulfing any Pathogen that comes its way,
Digesting and breaking it down, for long it won’t stay.
Producing antibodies marking the antigen,
Producing anti-toxins for neutralisation.”

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Chapter 2.4: Study Buddies

If done correctly, then this is a great method. However, you need to make sure you do not get
distracted. Studying together with friends is a study method that will keep you engaged. You
will feel motivated for your next study lesson instead of dreading it. This can be done in a
few different ways. It would be most effective if all the friends in the study circle were to be
doing the same subject, allowing a better flow for the session. Using this method, it will be
very easy to seek help when you are stuck on something and you are by yourself instead of
having to wait the next day to ask your teacher.

One of your friends can become the teacher if the group whilst you are rotating the role.
Teaching something is the best method of learning something and making the knowledge
firm in your head, strongly maintaining it. You could also share ideas between each other like
tips on answering questions. Your peers might understand something the way you don’t and
it would be useful to get a different perspective. This may be especially helpful in subjects
where there are long essays where opinions and inference are needed like in English or
maybe Sociology.

It would give you a motivation that all your friends are on the same level of study and you are
progressing together. It would also help everyone to contribute towards helping others in the
group who may not be doing so well.

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Chapter 2.5: Active Revision

This is where you are doing some light sort of exercise and reading your notes out loud. This
would increase your memory with the content. So maybe instead of just sitting down and
reading a revision guide you walk around your room or your house reading out your content
out loud. All this activity added together makes an increased effectiveness of study.
Tip 1: Whenever you are walking to go somewhere like the shops or to and from school grab
some notes with you and casually go other them. Do not become too distracted though as
your revision should be the focus at that time.
Tip 2: Prepare some audio files that read out notes to you while you are walking somewhere
or just getting on with your day to day activities. Like a podcast. Just read out your notes
from your revision guide or flashcards and record them. This is a simple, natural way to
understand a topic. This however should not be a main method as this only lightly goes over
the topic and you would have to put in more effort to establish a firm understanding of the
content.

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Chapter 2.6: Study, Rest and Test

When you are doing a sit-down revision then you must follow this formula. This ensures that
you have the most productive revision session and can take the most from it. You should
break it down into an hour session and then you can be flexible with it to fit your own needs.

In the first part of the session you are covering the content in detail with full concentration. In
this allocated time, you should put as much effort as possible going over a specific section
and strengthening it as much as possible.

In the second part, there is a rest period. However, IT MUST BE NOTED that this is only a
very short break and you must not spend too much time. Try not to make this exceed 5
minutes and never let it go over 10 minutes. Spending too much time resting will just cause a
lot of problems in your revision schedule.

The last part of the schedule is testing. You should find some questions to go over and then
mark it to see where you went wrong. You should try questions of different difficulty to test
yourself the best way. Start off doing some easy questions and then do harder ones.

Possible formats:
40 Minutes of Revision, 5 Minutes of Rest and 15 Minutes of Testing.
30 Minutes of Revision, 5 Minutes Rest and 25 Minutes of Testing.
25 Minutes of Revision, 5 Minutes Rest and 30 Minutes of Testing.

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Chapter 2.7: Exam Practise

What better way to get used to your exam then to do past papers. A person can revise all they
want and stack up the knowledge, but it will come to no use if they cannot answer exam
questions. Doing past papers will make you used to the format that questions are asking in
and it will make it easier for you to understand how to answer a question. You will also be
able to identify where you are struggling and where you can improve on. Find all the exams
you can possibly find from all the years including the specimen papers.
You may also find video walkthroughs on YouTube going through an exam paper. This
would be extremely beneficial as there would be someone who will show you how to do
something if you are stuck. As a tip do the exam yourself and then watch the walkthroughs.
Be sure to read the different mark schemes and specifications to see just how the examiners
want you to answer the question. You may feel you have the correct knowledge and you
know how to answer all the questions correctly but that doesn’t matter if you are not meeting
their requirements.

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Chapter 2.8: Memory Exercises

Approaching the end of the eBook, here are some exercises to help, improve your memory.

EXERCISE 1:
Time yourself, you have one minute to memorise these 10 words

- House - Grass
- Rendezvous - Tiny
- Xenophobia - Fatuous
- Monosyllabic - Enjambment
- Sojourn - Sectarianism

EXERCISE 2:

Now to memorise these words better you can try associate these words with something. So,
take the first letter and associate it with another, simple word. So, for Sectarianism I might
choose Sun, for Xenophobia I might choose X-ray and for Monosyllabic I might choose
Money. Repeat EXERCISE 1 but using this method. You can also experiment around and
find a method of memory that is best for you.

EXERCISE 3:

Try the method learnt in Exercise 2 for these 10 words

- Trimester - Web
- Unequivocally - Cardiac
- Nonchalant - Rejuvenation
- Cappuccino - Totalitarianism
- Arachnophobia - Tree

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