How to revise and make revision fun

How to make revision fun and help your children get the most out of their study time

Revision doesn’t have to be boring. In fact, revision that’s fun is much more effective! The more engaged in their revision, the more likely a child is to retain the information they are studying.

What makes for effective revision?

There are a few principles that make revision effective:

Active recall: The process of attentively trying to remember or produce notes. Passive revision like reading through notes, while less effort, typically results in less success.

Spaced repetition: Using sessions spread out over a timeframe that will allow children to keep revisiting the same material in the run-up to the exam. The opposite of cramming!

A variety of revision strategies – Using different written, creative or even social activities that will challenge the brain to take in new information, but also reproduce it in an exam context.

The methods for making revision fun that we’ve listed below incorporate these study principles so your children to get the most from the effort they put into revision. Let’s take a look!

1. Comic Strips

The brain is very good at storing episodic memories. An example of an episodic memory could be your first day at school or a trip abroad. In other words, the brain stores stories. It’s the reason why we can remember the plot of a movie better than we can a simple number.

Using comic strips to represent information will allow your children to harness this memory-storing power. It’s also a great way to stimulate their creativity to keep them engaged.

And it doesn’t have to be solely applicable to humanities like English Literature or History. You can use a comic strip to show the journey food takes on its way through the digestive system. Task your children with coming up with little characters that provide extra information and context. This technique doesn’t have to be how to revise all the time, but it’s a great way to make revision fun.

2. Music

Ever wondered why it’s easier to remember a song than it is a poem? Well, music has been shown to engage the parts of the brain associated with memory and emotion. Songs are often structured with patterns that are easier for the brain to store.

That means any information stored in a song gets an extra leg up. Task your children with writing some song lyrics about the water cycle, or Henry VIII and putting it to a familiar melody, whether that be Twinkl Twinkle Little Star, or a catchy pop song – both will be equally helpful.

3. Flashcards

Flashcards are another active revision method because they require your children to find the information and come up with ways of presenting a topic both concisely and accurately.

There are a range of things that your children can do with flashcards, too. They can make large, A6-sized flashcards that cover a topic such as the chapters of Mark’s gospel in detail. However, the following week they can make another set of smaller flashcards with just the essential details on a smaller piece of paper. This is an example of spaced repetition, that shows children how to revise and make what they learn stick.

Improve the effectiveness of this method by encouraging your children to draw little symbols and diagrams on the flashcards that either clarify the information or make them more memorable. For instance, drawing the phases of riverbed erosion may make the difference between simply remembering the sequence, and remembering the terms for each phase.

4. Reward systems

Revision can be drawn out over months, perhaps the best part of a year. To remain motivated, children need a few rewards to keep them going. There are plenty of ways to do this. It can be as simple as a trip to the cinema as a reward for getting through a day of revision.

A more formal reward system may involve using a chart where children can record their revision. It’s best to agree with your child what units best represent effective revision; that may be the amount of time they spend in a room without distractions (i.e. their phone or connection to the internet), the number of flashcards they make, or finishing a past paper. When they reach a certain achievement, a takeaway, a book or a film may make a great reward.

5. Quizzes

These days, there are plenty of online quizzes that your children can use to challenge themselves and gain a sense of what they need to work on. Websites like Kahoot give pupils a great opportunity to put their knowledge to the test.

However, pre-made quizzes can sometimes become easy ways of simulating revision, without your children putting in the effort to understand the context of the answer. Making children create their own quizzes pushes them to absorb the source information before transforming it into a question that they can give to friends. A pair or group of students may really benefit from exchanging a set of questions and marking each other’s answers. And there’s the added bonus of healthy competition that will make revision fun.

6. Change up the location

A contributing factor to the tedium of revision is the location. It’s not surprising that your children find revision boring when they sit at the same desk most of the day. Change it up by getting them out of the house. Take advantage of the local library, it may provide the perfect level of stimulation to get your children out of their revision fatigue. Equally, going to the park, weather permitting, may provide them with the necessary change of scenery.

For those for whom leaving the house is not possible, make sure your child’s study space has lots of natural light. Equally, putting up a whiteboard gives your child the opportunity to make notes while standing up. This movement can refresh their ability to revise.

7. Films, TV and Videos

While it may go against the principle of active revision, films and other visual media can complement some of the revision methods mentioned above. Particularly for humanities subjects, films with historical and/or literary detail may benefit your child’s understanding of texts and historical periods they are studying. Plays can be equally beneficial, too.

There are also plenty of helpful videos on YouTube and other video platforms that will help your children understand a science topic, and they’re a great way to make revision fun. To ensure that your children have absorbed the information in the video, challenge them to write out all the important information they can remember from the video clip. Why don’t you try it too, and see who could remember the most information?

8. PowerPoints

PowerPoints aren’t just for teachers. Students can also use them to their advantage – the use of slides can show your children how to revise with structure. Encourage them to use the slides like storyboards, or flashcards, by filling them with important textbook information. Animations, images and interesting designs will help them to remember the information better.

Once they’ve completed a PowerPoint presentation on a topic such as air resistance or The Handmaid’s Tale, they can present them to their classmates to test their ability to put the information into words – this is especially useful practise for exams where they will need to paraphrase the information under pressure.

9. Crafts

Crafts are yet another creative way to make revision fun. And you could go in any direction, as long as you’ve got the time and the supplies. For instance, you could use some craft paper and crayons to make a helpful little fortune-teller. They work very well with topics such as history, where you can categorise a topic into four themes, eight questions and a set of answers that you can reveal by pulling the fortune-teller apart.

But there are other crafts such as this cardboard revision machine which generates sum that your children can do to keep on practising their mental arithmetic in preparation for a non-calcular maths exam.

At My Performance Learning, we know how important it is to stimulate children with different methods that not only engage them but also develop their skills to recall information with confidence in an exam context.

Our mission is to understand children’s barriers to revising effectively and performing their best in assessments. That’s why we’ve created an AI model that allows us to pinpoint issues such as exam confidence, concentration, and memory recall in just 15 minutes, and create a tailored programme to confront these skills gaps. Check out our technology here.