The very first important thing with this is: you are either a person who can follow a Timetable or your not. Having a Revision timetable can be very helpful. It can help you maximise your time effectively, plan you week/day/month around you other activities first and can give you a clear mindset for what you need to get done and when you can get it done. Unfortunately, it can be pretty disastrous for some (like me in my GCSE year, but I prefer them now). Some of you can probably relate that you spend ages planning it, making it nice and pretty, follow it for a grand total of two days then effectively give up on it because the latest episode Brooklyn Nine Nine or Gotham (don't judge me) is just way too alluring and throws your how schedule off. Great. This is an article for those who may find it helpful or just wan't to give it a shot!
First things first you need to decide a time scale for your revision. If its the weeks before your exam it can be helpful (but also very depressing of how much of your life you have to give up because you totally forgot how close you are to exams and now your a bit screwed but you're trying to salvage the impending doom approaching you like a giant tidal wave - year 12 me was near drowning at this point of the year). The other option is that you're a sensible two or three months before exams and wan't to start knuckling down. The more optimistic (and usually learnt from experience approach) is that you are near the beginning of the year and you want to stick to this throughout.
The last option is me right now so I'm going to be approaching this month by month. To do this I'm only going to plan this a month in advance at a time so I can factor in other commitments. For the people on shorter time frames just alter the weeks to match your own time scale. To give you an idea of this, my first revision timetable post will be a week long version for the October Half Term.
Firstly, I decided to create my timetable in my bullet journal because this is my go to source when I need to organise my life. You can also do this online in pre made formats or make it on a sheet of paper to put on a wall or somewhere else where you will check it.
First you title the time frame of the timetable (in this case October 2016) because otherwise you may not have a clue what you are on about later on! The you need to draw out a 4 columned table. The amount of rows depends on how many days you are including. For a week long timetable I suggest 6-13 rows (1 for headings and the rest for days), this is so you can have more detail in the timetable while not overwhelming it. In the first column write Day, then the second, third and fourth morning, afternoon and evening. I choose to time it this way because I don't have set times for my revision. My revision varies between 20 minutes and 3 hours so scheduling an exact time doesn't particularly work, however if having a stricter schedule works better for you then just add more columns to the times which suit you. Finally write in all the days in the day column.
The next thing I did was fill in my plans and commitments for the holidays. As long as I still leave a significant amount of time for my revision, the work revolves around my life, not the other way around. I try not to let school dictate all my other time because spending time with family and friends is important to me and this far before exams they are prioritised. Later down the line however, these priorities will temporarily switch in the months of exam season. Once you have filled in all of your other commitments, you can see how much time you have left to revise.
I then wrote down all of the subjects I need to revise and do work for, then assigned each one a colour (optional). This helps me visualise and find the timetable more appealing (as it can be quite depressing to look at). Writing this out also helps me visualise components and assists in dividing up how much time I have and how much should be spent on each subject. For me, I try to spend an equal amount of time on each unit but if you struggle with particular areas, factor this in and spend more time on those because that will help you more than spending more time on a subject you are already good at.
This is the final product of my revision timetable. Notice how I haven't filled up some of the gaps. There are multiple reasons for this. Firstly, I don't usually have the willpower to do revision in the mornings unless I am up really early, so I have left mornings mostly free of revision. Also, I don't want to spend all day every day doing something, so the blank spaces are relaxing time slots. Finally, life happens as does laziness, and the gaps allows me to move revision slots around if I suddenly don't have time to do it at that point any more. It is really important to keep your revision timetable flexible otherwise one or two missed sessions can throw the whole thing off balance or make you give up on the whole thing.
Thank you for reading this post and I hope you enjoyed it. Please leave any comments below on how you structure your revision, whether you like using a timetable and if you do, how you structure it! I would love to hear other people's approaches!Don't forget to follow, subscribe and share!
