Turning Breaks into Success: Why the Holiday Season Matters

Written by Lewis Mclellan

The IB is renowned for not allowing breaks, and for many, it will inevitably squeeze its way into the holiday season. 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 guide has you covered, detailing the key skills and strategies required for success in your IB revision.

First, you must 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

A revision strategy mostly encompasses having a revision timetable, but a strategy also plans not just for when you will study certain subjects but how you will study them. 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 an HL subject over an SL subject, or 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.

A Note of Caution: Do not create a timetable that stretches you too much, as this 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, adapting your timetable to improve your studying, should be welcomed even if it contradicts what you had originally planned.

Conducting Effective Revision

Start Early

To begin with, and this is a fairly obvious one, start early. The earlier you can start your revision, the better. This may sound totally intuitive, but I suggest it not because it means that you can revise more, but 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. 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

As for techniques to revise subjects, I mostly split these up into two categories:

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.

Best of luck!