Mr Pearce, Deputy Head of UCAS, Politics Teacher and our Apply Plus programme lead, offers some top tips for the art of revising well. As we approach Trinity Term and public examinations loom on the horizon, remember that lots of the keys to success are surprisingly simple and manageable. The top tips below come from a wide range of previous pupils who are now off doing brilliant things at university, the workplace, and beyond, but who were once nervously staring at fast-approaching exams just like you are now. Here are their pearls of wisdom on revision … Don’t wait until you feel like it: if you wait until you ‘feel like’ revising, it will likely never happen. Set yourself a start time, and then get cracking. As someone once said, “Just do it”. You’ll feel much more like it when you’ve made a start, and the sense of satisfaction and progress kick-starts an upwards progression. More often than not, positive emotions follow positive actions rather than the other way around. Make a plan: having all your topics planned out and assigned to particular revision slots on particular days is really useful. This is the only way you can be sure that you have enough time to get through everything, so make a plan and do your best to stick to it. Be kind to yourself too – “no plan ever survives first contact with the enemy”, and precious few pupils stick perfectly to their revision aims: but the very act of making a plan helps you take control and measure your progress as you go along. Revise actively! My old biology teacher at school always use to say his number one, most magical, most sophisticated and most earth-shattering revision tip was… “use a pen”. Underwhelmed? So was I. But it’s fundamental: simply ‘reading over’ information is not an effective way to get it to stick in your brain. So use a pen – or whatever other format you’ll use in the real exam – and revise actively! One of the most effective ways to do this is to make a great set of notes on each topic, then make notes on your notes, then condense them down until the whole topic is summarised on a single side of A4. Other great active revision tools include the highly recommended “write, learn, cover, test, check, repeat as required" method, as well as good old flash cards, mind maps, posters and mnemonics. Find what works for you, but always revise actively . Sit at a proper desk: I once tried ‘revising’ in the sunshine because it was a nice day. It didn’t work. The temptation to revise on your bed or on the sofa can be strong too, but the only place for really focused work is a proper table or desk. After all, it also replicates the real exam situation better, so it’s a win-win. Use a countdown clock: at the start of a work session, set a countdown timer for the amount you intend to do. Start the timer and start working, but STOP the timer whenever you do anything that is not actually revision… making drinks, organising your folder, going to the toilet, and so on. This will focus your work time on productive work more effectively, which, in turn, will also ensure you get better time off; work should be work, rest should be rest, play should be play. The more effectively and efficiently you work, the better your time off will feel too. Avoid distractions: we all know the dangers of procrastination, where we put off work until we’ve tidied our room or decorated our revision timetable. Outright distraction is even more dangerous, so you need to be ruthless: turn the music off (unless it truly helps you learn), leave your phone in another room entirely, and bring a supply of snacks and drinks to your desk so you don’t have to make that lengthy trip to the kitchen. And remember, if you find yourself getting distracted, stop the clock, because you’ve stopped working! Take short breaks: your brain can’t focus on difficult revision for any more than an hour in one go, possibly even less. Find out what works for you, but 30 minutes solid revision followed by a 5-minute break is often a good pattern. Practice papers / questions: this is crucial! You’re spending all this time gaining knowledge, but we all know the painful truth that your beautiful hard-earned knowledge isn’t worth very much if you can’t apply it to the exam questions. Like any great sportsperson, you don’t just need power: you need technique to enable you to get the most out of that power. In exams, knowledge is power, but we need to know exactly what the examiners want us to do with it in the exam. So: practise lots of timed exam questions, and use mark schemes to help you assess how well you did. Ask your teachers to mark them too – it’s the sort of thing we really like because it shows you’re doing all the right things! Stay healthy – sleep well, eat well and exercise: it can be tempting to go ‘revision crazy’ around exam time… “I’ll sleep when exams are over!” But revision is a very brain-hungry activity, and your brain is an energy-hungry machine: it needs servicing and maintenance to keep it in tip-top shape. The reality is that the right balance of sleep, healthy eating, exercise, connecting with friends and having some fun become more rather than less important during exams. Did you know that doing exercise makes the knowledge you’ve revised stick in your brain better, even if the exercise comes after the revision session rather than before it? Make these good things happen. You’ll be infinitely more effective at revising if you’re keeping yourself well. Balance is key: here’s the equation: rest without work is less fulfilling, less rewarding and less fun. Work without rest is less productive, less effective, and more stressful. All performers, from Olympic athletes on the track to world-class musicians on the stage, know that no success comes without serious hard work, but also that appropriate rest is essential for growth and strength. If it’s good enough for them… Not all of these suggestions will suit everyone, but the most important thing for everyone to remember is that you need to be organised, balanced and disciplined when it comes to revision. After all, revision lasts just a little while – but the qualifications you stand to achieve last a lifetime. Make the most of revision time, and we look forward to seeing your smile on results day. And if you need us before then, reach out – to your tutor, your teachers, your Head of House, or the Wellbeing Team: we’re all here to help!

In the lead up to Neurodiversity Week, Lower 5 pupil, Isis Gurney, shares her experience of Dyslexia and discusses how adjustments should be made in schools to support pupils. My name is Isis Gurney, and I would like to talk about something that has affected me my entire life and will continue to affect me and many others for the rest of our lives. My aim is to promote awareness and appeal to the education system that reasonable adaptations should be made to our everyday learning, to best support us throughout our school careers. There will be many people reading this who have struggled with reading aloud in public or re-read a word a million and one times and struggled to get it right. Dyslexia is a hidden, but common learning difficulty that directly affects reading, writing and spelling. These are three of the main components in every lesson. It Is important to raise awareness for everyone, even those who are not diagnosed yet. It is estimated to affect five to ten percent of the population. There are claims that up to seventeen percent of the population have reading difficulties. There are four types of dyslexia: phonological, surface, rapid naming deficit and double deficit. The most common type is phonological, which includes struggling to decode or sound out words. The rarest type is double deficit, which is a mix of phonological and rapid naming dyslexia, this is when a person struggles with quickly naming things such as numbers, letters and colours. But it’s not all doom and gloom! Studies show that dyslexic people also have hidden superpowers. They have more vivid imaginations and visual thinking than the average person. They can solve complicated problems quickly and efficiently. They can identify similarities among multiple things. Luckily, they are proven to have great resilience, have excellent interpersonal skills and form strong connections with other people. Dyslexic people are intuitive and good at understanding how things work and are champions of abstract ideas, it’s no surprise that Pablo Picasso and Leonardo Di Vinci are among many famous dyslexics! Take Tom Holland, most famous for portraying Spider Man. According to him, his dyslexic thinking and methods make him a better actor. He says that his struggles have enhanced his creativity and intuition, allowing him to approach roles in a unique way and this shows that he uses his dyslexia as a real-life superpower. Did you know that half of the NASA workforce uses dyslexic thinking to get human beings into space? Here are some adjustments we need to get Norwich School pupils cast in the next Marvel movie or behind the desk of mission control: Typing when taking our exams and for long pieces of writing, this makes our work easier to read and understand. Using off white or pale yellow paper can slightly improve reading performance for those with reading difficulties, because the contrast between the text and paper is reduced, reading is also much faster and easier in dyslexia friendly fonts. Allowances for extra time in exams reduces stress of needing to finish quickly and provides additional time for proof reading. Finally, one to one or small group interventions to support reading and writing techniques make a huge difference. There may be many undiagnosed pupils in school who struggle in silence, so this continued support and small changes are what is needed to make learning more accessible and enjoyable for our pupils.