In the classroom

Delivered by Roisin McKeever

I came across the idea of weekly reviews in ‘The A level Mindset’ by Steve Oakes and Martin Griffin. The idea of a weekly review is to help students manage their learning so that they don’t cram or binge on learning. Students do significantly better if they are doing their revision little and often. When I ask students if they have looked at their notes since last lesson they usually say no, so I decided to give them some help.

I introduce the idea of a weekly review at the end of the first full week back in September. I give the students five minutes to make sure they have all of their notes and then I give them 10 minutes to read through them. Once this is done I give them the weekly review template:

(This is a template for A level Economics).

I work through this with them, modelling how I would fill it in. This is an important step in the process as it gives students an indication of what it is they are expected to do each week. This is then set as homework at the end of each week – I will set additional work on top of this as the week’s progress. The students know that I will be testing them in some way at the start of Monday’s lesson to encourage them to complete the reviews and to read over them.

I tell the students to keep the weekly reviews in a separate part of their folder and to read through them on a regular basis to keep on top of their revision. I give students access to the template but I encourage them to adapt it to suit what they are recording that week.

I also suggest this idea to my sixth form tutor group – they need to set aside an hour on a Friday to do this, spending 15 minutes per subject condensing their notes for the week.

You can find a copy of the weekly review template in Staff Academic – CPD – 15 minute forums – 2019/20