4 key tips to prepare for your exams

I hated exams. I was lucky because that hatred didn’t stop me, and I did really well in my GCSEs, A-Levels, and at University. As a teacher, I’ve had so many great opportunities to impart the things that I’ve learned onto the next generation, in terms of how best to study or to revise, and I’ve been able to share those pearls of wisdom on my blog too.

However, I still hate exams. That’s not changed; I think that they’re a regressive form of assessment that the government is too stubborn to change. They cause unnecessary stress for students, regardless of age, and put untold pressures onto their performance on a single day.

That’s not okay. From an academic perspective, it’s also not representative of how real historians operate, which is that they’d spend years of their life gathering evidence to prove or disprove a thesis. If we could figure out how to test our students more accurately, that’d be great. Practically speaking, I doubt we’ll ever come close to replicating the process of being a real historian in a classroom, though my 3-day gobbet exam in my Final Year did come close. We were given 72 hours to work with a number of sources and were free to gather research before and during the controlled assessment. Likewise, one component of the OCR exam board that I teach to A Level involves students producing a piece of coursework over an entire year, which aims to synthesise and assess the viewpoints of historians about a topic of the students’ choosing.

With all of that being said, exams aren’t showing signs of changing anytime soon, so it makes sense that we’d try to optimise our performances as well as possible. Here are my four tips for preparing for your upcoming exams, from the perspective of someone who’s done it all before.

Tip 1: Start early

We recently had a Parent’s Evening with Year 8 students, and I gave the same advice to many of them that I have given to my GCSE and A-Level students: start early.

The research indicates that the earlier you start, the more likely you are to recall knowledge. This is because of a phenomenon called the Forgetting Curve, which suggests that the less you revisit a topic, the more likely you are to forget something.

So you might be wondering: why would I even bother learning something if I’m just going to end up forgetting it?

Well, if you learn something and continuously come back to it, you’re more likely to transform that into a long-term memory. Following this technique for studying will also dramatically reduce your stress, since you won’t be panicking a week before an exam to rapidly learn something. If you form this one habit early in life, and stick to it, you’ll be set with positive habits for the rest of your days.

Tip 2: Organise your space

A tidy room means a tidy mind. If the space in which you’ll be revising is full of empty cans, with notes strewn everywhere, you’re more likely to feel unsettled while you commit whatever facts you need to to your long-term memory. Have a Big Tidy of your space before you even think of starting.

Once that’s done, find a permanent space to store your things. When I was at school, I had a cubby hole in my desk for all of my notes and books to keep them in one place. At University, I used a shelf on the wall for everything that I needed. Now, with so many books and pieces of paper to go through as a teacher, I use an in-and-out tray to keep my marking together, and folders for storing every sheet that you could possibly imagine.

During the tidying and sorting phase, create a revision timetable and stick to it. I’m not suggesting that you jot down exactly when you revise, since I found that far too rigid when I was taking exams. Instead, make use of Forest to keep you away from your phone. Combine that with the Pomodoro method and revise in chunks. This will ensure that you don’t get burned out and still have fun while you study. Better yet, consider Ali Abdaal’s advice from his bestselling book, Feel Good Productivity: what would this be like if it were fun? #ad

I would gamify the process: see how quickly you can get through all of your topics, or compete with your friends to see who can make the best flash cards in the most efficient way possible. Do anything you can to make the space and means by which you study the most fun experience you can.

It doesn’t really matter how you organise your space, but it does matter that it is organised and the experience is as entertaining as possible.

Tip 3: Organise your notes

My note-taking system has had 27 years to develop and, by this point, I’m pretty proud of it. I use OneNote for digital notes (you can read about why I’m still using it in 2024 right here). I use a Bullet Journal for physical notes because it’s still the system that simply can’t be beaten. In both of those formats, I use colour for very specific reasons.

Colour was just as important as when I was taking notes for school and for University.

On handwritten revision notes, I’d use black for titles. Blue was used for the main body of text, with red and green used for emphasis or extra detail. Not only did this help certain snippets stay in my brain, the colour made the notes far nicer to look at without wasting time highlighting to make my notes look pretty (there is a difference, I promise). I still use this system in my Bullet Journal because it’s stood the test of time.

If you’re more about digital notes, I’d still recommend simple colour usage. The notes that I take for writing literature reviews as part of my teaching job, and the resources that I use at work, all feature colour heavily to make it clear to me – and to my learners – where attention should be drawn to.

The more methods that you can think of to increase your brain power, making learning a little more efficient, the better.

Tip 4: Active learning

The way in which you revise is almost as important as what you revise. I tell my groups, regardless of their age, that active learning is so much more useful than any other form of revision because it actively involves you. You’re not passively reading or highlighting. Instead, you’re doing something with your notes to engage your brain.

Maybe you’re creating Cornell Notes and testing yourself, or using a list of questions and your friends to test you. Maybe you’re producing mind maps and spider diagrams, and then using write, cover, check, repeat to learn that content. You could be somebody who learns best by using the Feynman Technique. Whatever it is, do something with your notes. In my experience, the students who do more while they learn are much more likely to retain that information.

What are your favourite study tips? Let me know in the comments below and pass on your pearls of wisdom to anyone else passing through.

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