Holmes Chapel Comprehensive School & Sixth Form College
SMART LEARNING
Welcome to our Smart Learning pages. These pages are your guide to maximising your brain’s learning and remembering potential both in and out of school. The best way to use these resources is to work through each unit, from the start - before, during and after. But in the short term you might want to decide if you need most help with preparation (before learning), with learning and understanding (during learning) or with revision and recall (after learning)
There are so many myths about learning and revision. You will see that all of these techniques are based on real psychological evidence. That means they genuinely work! So watch them with an open mind and with commitment to changing and improving your habits.
Thank you to Dan Conley at Wilmslow High School for the time he has taken over preparing this for us!
BEFORE
DURING
AFTER
BEFORE LEARNING
Welcome to the first stage of learning - preparation. If the foundations are not ready, then there's not much point in trying to build. See below for topics about understanding how to prepare yourself to learn as well as how to avoid the pitfalls of modern life that can cause concentration and learning to some ‘unstuck’......
Attention
Diet
Motivation
Procrastinating
Reading
Sleep
Wellbeing
DURING LEARNING
Time for the main event - learning new information. Once the foundations are in place and you're mentally ready, use the strategies, tips and techniques below to level up your learning. Remember to promise yourself to change your habits in line with this advice. It’s worth the risk!
Knowledge Organisers
Peg System
Loci
Dual Coding
Flash Cards
Elaborating
Cognitive Lead
Teacher Feedback
AFTER LEARNING
So, you’ve learnt the new information and now you need to be able to recall it. This is where the big gains can be made, and lots of wasted time avoided. The pages below will move you on from being a memory novice to a memory master - and some of the advice might surprise you!
Using Revision Materials
Past Papers
The Forgetting Curve
Illusion of Mastery
Interleaving
Digital Devices
Spacing
REVISION & FOCUS APPS
There are plenty of apps available to help you revise and focus. Here are just three of the ones we recommend.
Revisely
Revisely - This app will turn any notes, cue cards, PowerPoint presentations, or knowledge organisers into multiple choice questions in seconds. For example, you can upload a knowledge organiser from Firefly and it very cleverly generates a quiz based on the knowledge organiser. It is great for testing knowledge retrieval.
Flora - Green Focus
Flora - This app helps you to minimise distractions and focus more effectively. Students typically find it very difficult to maintain concentration, but Flora has been shown to help students remain on task whilst revising. If you are someone who struggles focusing, or likes to procrastinate, then this is a fantastic app.
Adapty - Revision Planning
Adapt - This app will generate a revision timetable for you based on your subjects and exam boards. All you need to do is type in your subjects and the exam board that you are with, and it will give you a personalised timetable that will help you balance your revision over the next few months. It is often very difficult to work out a balanced and effective timetable for all f your subjects, but Adapt will do all of the work for you. It then gives you a daily to-do list of topics to study.