As it starts to wind up to exam season (for those of us with March entries) it’s a good idea to have an arsenal of revision activities at the ready. Past papers are great but there are many more ways to engage our students in meaningful revision. Here are NumberLoving’s favourites.

Revision Relay Races

These are a great way to get students engaged, divide pupils into teams of 3, each team collects their first question from the front, when they have answered it they bring it to you. If they’re correct they get ten points and the next question, if they’re wrong they can keep trying but do have the option to pass at the cost of one point. This score board really helps keep them motivated if you can display it on the IWB. I would also recommend assigning points for good team work. There are some excellent examples on the TES, this one shared by Alipon and this one by George Stewart. I have used these templates to create an algebra version, a low ability version and a blank version. If you don’t have time to write 20 questions and print then just cut up some old exam papers. Sorted!

Collective Memories

Collective memories are a great way to get students to remember and recall information. For more detailed notes on how they work and loads of free resources see here. If you get them to do an individual one then send it home with them to go on the wall in the bathroom!

Jeopardy

This is a great revision game, there are quite a few floating around on the TES, for example here is one by Andrew Chambers. Students work in teams and take it in turn to choose a topic and a number of points (more points = harder question) if their team gets it correct they gain the points, if they get it wrong the other teams get a chance to steal. If you have mixed ability teams you can get some peer tutoring going on and it makes for a really fun lesson.

Jeopardy SATS revision

Jeopardy Equations Higher GCSE

Jeopardy Triangles Higher GCSE

Micro Teaching

I have done this a few times with great results, split your class into groups of three and give them a revision topic which they need to work on. Ask them to prepare a five to ten minute lesson on their chosen topic. The following lesson all groups have to deliver their lessons to the rest of the class. You can get in some peer assessment and develop soft skills (I show two clips at the start, one of Alan Partridge and one of Barak Obama to get them thinking about good presentation techniques!). I have two worksheets and a PowerPoint produced by the students which I now use myself!

Key points flip book

This is a simple idea to encourage students to make some revision notes. Give them some squares of colourful paper and they have to go through each lesson in their books and write at least one key point or example from it. Then hole-punch and secure with a treasury tag and tell them to read it every night before bed!

Auction

I found and loved this resource on the TES, students first have to ‘bid’ for the equipment they think they will need and then answer the revision questions. This would make for a really fun and memorable revision activity which helps consolidate the use of equipment such as a ruler for drawing graphs and a compass for constructions.

CSI resources

I blogged earlier this week about Mysteries, my collection of CSI resources are here and make a great revision lesson. Although most of them are designed for KS3 they translate just fine for Foundation GCSE.

TES Revision Collection

My Barton himself has cherry picked some of the best revision resources on the TES and added them to this collection. Really worth a good look as there are some excellent resources in here.

Happy revising, if anyone has any other good revision ideas we would love to hear from you! Get in touch @numberloving and visit our NumberLoving store for free and premium resources