Written by Lewis Mclellan
Turning Breaks into Success: Why the Holiday Season Matters
And so it begins. Renowned for not allowing breaks, for many, the IB will also squeeze its way into this holiday break. Indeed, many DP2 students around the world will be taking this holiday as their opportunity to kick off their revision for IB exams in April/May. Whether this is you or you are set to start revising in the next couple of months, this blog has you covered, detailing the key skills and strategies required for success in your IB revision.
First of all, you have to start with the question of how to organise your IB revision. For this, I strongly recommend setting solid goals before you do anything else. By this, I mean: decide what your goals are for the IB exams in terms of grades; make sure these are specific and realistic but also challenging. Furthermore, set clear boundaries. Taken together this will help you to create a revision strategy that has clear reasons behind it and that you are happy with.
Devising a Revision Strategy
As for devising a revision strategy, I should first of all be clear on what a revision strategy exactly is. A revision strategy mostly encompasses basically having a revision timetable, but a strategy also plans not just for when you will study certain subjects but how you will study them also. In other words, a revision strategy is the product of you taking time to think about how, specifically, to achieve your goals in each of your subjects.
Key Components of a Strong Revision Strategy
Aspects to consider when devising such a strategy include resources and priorities. Before launching into revision you should make sure you have all the resources you need to successfully approach the subject. This means making sure you have notes on all content and a bank of past papers/practice questions at the very minimum. Working out your priorities is also essential. This means deciding perhaps that you will dedicate more time/effort to a subject that is a HL over a SL subject. Or maybe to a subject that you are weaker in. It could also just mean spending more time revising specific content/elements within a subject.
The Role of a Timetable
Of course, the best way to codify a revision strategy is through a revision timetable. A timetable allows you to plan meticulously for when and how you are going to revise your subjects that week. In that way, revision timetables can be really helpful for good revision as they allow you to organise your revision and be comprehensive in it. I should however add some notes of caution here. Firstly, do not create a timetable that stretches you too much. Often this does happen with students and it can lead to burnout. Secondly, do not be too rigid with your revision timetable. Feel free to add more of something or do less of another subject if that is what you feel is right at the time. This flexibility, as in adapting your timetable to improve your studying, should be welcomed even if it contradicts what you had originally planned.
Conducting Effective Revision
Start Early
Moving on to conducting the actual revision for IB exams, I have a few useful tips for you. To begin with, and this is a fairly obvious one, start early. The earlier you can start your revision the better effectively. This may sound totally intuitive but I suggest it not because it means that you can revise more actually. Instead, I think it’s really important because it allows you to carry out your revision at a more relaxed pace. Ultimately, this allows you to take breaks in your revision and not rush any important parts of it.
Reward Yourself
Sticking with the fairly obvious pieces of advice, I would also offer that it is important to reward yourself for good revision. Sticking to a revision timetable and putting in solid revision hours amidst all else going on is tough going. Any way in which you achieve this should be celebrated and hopefully doing so provides extra motivation.
Optimize Your Study Environment
I would also suggest that you find your ideal study space and plan ahead so that this is where you do your revision for. In my experience, a surprising amount of students end up squeezing their revision into awkward blocks of time and thus into places where they are not at their most comfortable.
Techniques for Revising Different Subjects
Optimize Your Study Environment
As for techniques to revise subjects, I mostly split these up into two categories. For category 1 you have the content-heavy subjects like Biology or History. For these, the techniques that I recommend include flashcards, content revision with friends and creating plans for practice questions. In general, these techniques come down to keeping revision for the subjects reasonably light and not as taxing as they often can be.
Concept-Heavy Subjects (e.g., Math, Languages)
For category 2 of the concept-heavy subjects like maths and languages, the best techniques are slightly different as they revolve more around practice implementing the concepts. As such, past papers seem always to be really quite valuable with these.
Preparing for Exam Day
Recharge Before the Big Day
My last piece of advice for IB revision relates to the time of actually taking the exams. The business end if you will! For this often-stressful time of the year I always advise students to take a step back from revision and instead focus on recharging. This means prioritising sleep, exercise, social life, etc over studying. This is because once you reach a certain proximity to the exams, being refreshed when you walk into the exam hall becomes the most important determinant of your success.
Hopefully some of the above tips are helpful for some of you starting to think about your revision for upcoming IB exams. If you feel that you require more help as part of your revision for exams, you can have a free chat with a Lanterna consultant via this link here. During this chat you can discuss the options Lanterna may have that could help you along in your revision process which include one-to-one tutoring as well as revision courses such as the winter mock exam revision courses we have coming up soon in January.
Best of luck!
