Peggy Hughes is a writer based in Berlin, Germany. She has worked in the education sector for her whole career, and loves to help make sense of it to students, teachers and applicants. Read more on her website.
Making science stick in students minds is all about choosing the right activities, selecting the right time, and building student awareness of the revision process. Revision guidance should focus not only on the “whats”, but on the “hows” and the “whys”, too.
Read on for some key tips on how to guide effective STEM revision.
Don’t forget the fundamentals
In last month’s article on revision, we outlined the fundamentals of revising well, revising effectively, and drumming up student enthusiasm for revision. These ground rules run through STEM revision, too. To recap, all revision should be:
Spaced
Students should space out their revision over small, regular sessions. Less cramming for hours, more revisiting content for 30-minutes at a time. This spacing allows students to “forget and re-learn” subject content.
Personalised
Keeping students motivated and enthusiastic is closely linked to reminding them of learning’s relevance and use. Personalised goals go a long way in making this happen for revision, so make time for students to set their own targets.
Regularly tested
Regular testing gives students a chance to practice their retrieval ability in a low-stakes environment. It also allows them to spot parts of knowledge that need a bit more work and to target them in their revision. And, finally, regular testing gives teachers an opportunity to reward the hard work that their students are putting in.
Revise actively
When students read, and re-read, textbooks and notes, diligently underlining phrases and highlighting whole paragraphs, they often end up feeling very familiar with subject content. They spend a lot of time with it, they recognise it, and the hours they have dedicated to their revision are stacking up.
This type of revision, however, does very little to improve student’s recall ability. And, after all, revision is all about recall; ensuring that knowledge is embedded firmly in students’ long-term memories so that they can access and engage with it on demand. Learning via reading is too passive, and will have little positive impact on student performance.
Instead, encourage STEM students to turn to active revision. In general, active revision is anything that requires students to retrieve or apply subject knowledge. You might ask them to reproduce some of their notes from memory, for example, to complete past paper questions, or to make and use flashcards to test their memory of fact-based content.
Build in reflection
Reflection is a key part of revision because it builds metacognition. By encouraging students to be aware of how they learn, we can help them understand their own progress and strengths. Through reflection, students are not only able to evaluate their performance, but get to grips with the how and the why. If they know why they did well, they are more likely to be able to do it again.
As well as revealing their content-based strengths, reflection also enables students to identify which revision techniques are working the best. This ensures that they are always revising via a process that works well for them. This brings us back to both our points on personalisation (since students are evaluating their own performance and tailoring their plans accordingly) and on growth mindsets (since students are able to see where their effort is working and how to make it more effective).
Teach students how to use revision strategies effectively
Many students will have heard of the main revision strategies. You would be hard-pressed, for example, to find a STEM student who had never heard of flashcards. But do students know exactly how to effectively harness these strategies?
To ensure effective revision, STEM students should be aware of, and continuously evaluating, the revision activities in which they engage.
That means we’re looping back to metacognition. Students should know when, and how, to engage in each variety of revision activity. To take our topic of flashcards – how might we ensure that these are used effectively?
The Education Endowment Foundation explores this topic in more detail. It advises that, when showing students how to use flashcards, a clear path should be taken to ensure that they are used in the most effective way possible. This can be broken down into the following steps (and applied to any revision strategy):
- Ask students when they have previously used flashcards, if they remember how to use them, and if they were useful.
- Instruct students – in detail – how to make effective flashcards. Make sure to explain why the ones that work, work.
- Show students a completed, effective flashcard, as well as a completed, less-effective flashcard. Ask students to compare the two and demonstrate how you might use one, and what might go wrong (too much information, for example).
- Check that students have understood by getting them to explain your instructions to a partner.
- Practice making flashcards together.
- Get students to practice independently, creating and using their own flashcards.
