Five ways we bring revision alive at Firth Park Academy

Dean Jones has been given the opportunity to currently be the acting principal at Firth Park Academy in Sheffield, a wonderfully aspirant and diverse school representing 37 different languages within our student population. Prior to this, he’s been an assistant principal at a Teaching School in South Yorkshire and a specialist leader for education focussed on Teaching & Learning. Dean teaches, and hope to always teach, Geography.

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If students love revising, then they love learning and their progress will improve as a result. Therefore, to engage all students in revision we have been bringing it alive as a school. Here are five strategies we have used, particularly to ensure our most able students increase the depth of understanding needed as they chase their A*s.

1. Educreations

Create an audio and visual recording to animate the topic you want students to learn – dragging in photos, drawing diagrams and adding a voiceover before uploading the finished resource to your student website. Then Flip the learning so that students watch these before class so they then arrive in lesson to teach you. Better still; get students to make these themselves.

2. Fantastic Revision Board Games

When it is your Elite Learner revision programme on a Friday after school, active learning is key. So create board games, like this ‘Cranium’ plagiarised example where students in pairs are competing to model a shield volcano, act out a destructive plate boundary, say an answer to a question or sketch globalisation.

3. Models

It is good fun (I think) to use a checklist of success criteria to create a revision fact sheet of key concepts or to answer some practice exam questions. However, it is great fun to do this and then stick it to a model you have made (eg of coastal defences or a Tropical Rainforest).

4. Green Screen videos

You could get students to answer an exam question as applying learning is absolutely crucial. However, if your school is lucky enough to have a green screen, you could get students to bring their exam answer alive by sharing it in the form of a news broadcast. Pop some relevant photos in the background and you then have a revision tool to rewatch and share with your class.

5. Homemade Videos

Students always remember the songs and homemade videos you knock together in a 10 minute before school video snippet, especially when a wig and funny voice features. The once-or-twice-a-year departmental day out to the coast or the countryside is also a great chance to film a video about coastal management, or wind farms, with a bit of a plot to make students laugh at us, and so remember their learning a little more.

Learning with a smile, looking forward to learning and so putting learning ahead of all is the goal.

How do you bring revision to life at your school? Let us know in the comments.