Our guest blogger is Kit Betts-Masters, Director of Learning Science at Abbeyfield School in Northampton, and the science teacher behind “Gorilla Physics”, a YouTube channel dedicated to helping students get the top grade in their exams. Kit has used Tassomai in his school since 2017 and is a big fan of the program so it made sense for us to support his channel and to invite him to share some tips for exam success.

You just don’t have time to try stuff and see what works!  You’ve got so many subjects and so much content to revise that it is not easy to fit it all in!  It isn’t possible to try out every revision technique and figure out which is the best for each subject and which is the best for you.  And trust me, if you just go ahead and do whatever, you'll spend ages on it and you won’t remember much.

You see, when most people start revising, they do one of two things; they make notes, or they re-read notes and they highlight passages.  Whilst I will always maintain that study is never wasted, these are certainly two of the least effective ways to study.

What is the most time effective way to study? 

Luckily someone has done the hard work for you!

John Dunlosky, and his educational psychologist colleagues, read and analysed a group of over 700 studies into how people learn best.  You can read it all here. Too much to read? Don’t worry, I’ve summarised it in this video:

Spoiler alert!

The top five are:

• Practice testing (self quizzing)

• Spaced revision

• Interleaved practice

• Self-explanation

• Elaborate interrogation

(I explain what they all mean in the video!)

What should you do?

You don’t even need to figure out how to use the techniques, because Tassomai does the top three! These techniques are really good for building your memory.  The last two will be excellent for your exam skills.  It is best to be doing a mix of all five. The message that you should be taking from all this evidence is to study less and study smart.  Isn’t that what we all want to do?  Get the maximum gain from our investment of time?!

It’s easy to get comfortable doing just the top three though, so I really recommend that you try out the self-explanation and elaborate interrogation techniques.  They will feel a little bit weird at first, but you’ll see the difference in your confidence in exams if you trust them and use them alongside the spaced, interleaved, retrieval practice.  If you get access to something like Tassomai, you can use it to identify your weaker areas and then use these two techniques to focus in and target your priority areas.

If you actually take this advice, it'll feel a little bit harder at first, but you'll get so much more done in so much less time! 

Give self-quizzing a go!

Over the last few years it became massively useful to do repeated and spaced retrieval practice when students were working from home, but there’s no excuse to stop now, especially as you can use apps like Tassomai while on the go.  It is definitely better to be at school where your teachers can help you learn all the difficult skills like application, analysis and evaluation, but it’s always good to carve out some time in a distraction free environment to build your knowledge and retention.

It’s better to work with your peers and friends in a social environment at school to collaborate and build up the skills for the higher order questions, but it is better for memory building to be in a focused place, with focused time.

Please don’t feel like all is lost!  Hopefully this should make you determined to not give in!  Do the things that are still possible with the time that you have left before mock exams and then you’ll have an even better understanding of what you should be doing for future assessments.  Get on there and blitz that spaced, interleaved, retrieval practice.  You’ll feel better for it and you’ll be ready for the more challenging stuff after the Christmas break!

Kit Betts-Masters

@gorillaphysics on Twitter