TRAIN your BRAIN to RETAIN Revision Master ClassTASK 1: COMPLETE THE SURVEY ON YOUR STUDY SKILLS5 minutes

Objectives

By the end of this session, you will be able to:

1. Understand which of your study skills require improvement

2. Understand 6 revision techniques to TRAIN your BRAIN to RETAIN

3. Rank the 6 techniques and pick 3 to use in your revision

Rate your study skills…

Scoring your survey:

You get 10 points for OFTEN

You get 5 points for SOMETIMES

You get 0 points for RARELY

There are 6 study skills areas: reading, notes, studying, memory, preparation for tests, time management…

Did you get 35-50 for them all? If not you need to work on some specific areas!

The 6 techniques…

1. Mind maps: make your own Mind Map: ‘Me’ 5 mins

How to Mind Map…Did you include the following in your Mind Map?

The 6 techniques…

2. Method of Loci (loci means ‘locations’)

You are about to see 10 words

Try to remember them in order-you have 1 minute

Now write a list of 10 locations in the Conference Hall

This time link the words to places you have written e.g. screen, door, window etc. and link the word on the screen to the location. You have 1 min

Does the method of loci improve recall?

The 6 techniques…3. Mnemonics

Order of colours in the rainbow, or visual spectrum:(Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet)Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain.Order of taxonomy in biology:(Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species)Kids Prefer Cheese Over Fried Green Spinach.Try to make a mnemonic to remember the revision techniques you are learning today:Mindmaps, loci, mnemonics, cards, stories, notesYou have 5 mins

The 6 techniques…

4. Revision cards

Key features: cover all learning objectives from the specification, use pictures, colour & underlining, write exam questions on the back to test yourself

e.g.

The 6 techniques…

5. Story Telling

This includes making a story familiar to you incorporating what you need to revise, also use pictures to bring your story to life!

E.g. To revise the last 5 Prime Ministers:

The 5 being Thatcher, Major, Blair, Brown and Cameron.

Make up a story using their names 5 mins.

The 6 techniques…6. Note Taking: Condense this text into 20 words:

How information flows through the brain (USA Today, April 2013) Information flows from the outside world through our sight, hearing smelling, tasting and touch sensors. Memory is simply ways we store and recall things we've sensed. Recalling memories re-fires many of the same neural paths we originally used to sense the experience and, therefore, almost re-creates the event. We store — for fractions of a second — sensory information in areas located throughout the cortex. Then some data moves into short-term memory. Finally, some of that information goes in long-term storage in various parts of the cortex, much of it returning to the sensory cortex areas where we originally received it. For exams you need it in long term memory.

Only the data that catches our attention (like a police car behind us) or because we need it soon (a telephone number) goes into short-term memory. We hold short-term data for maybe half a minute. Short-term storage is small; it holds about seven independent items at one time, such as "carry" numbers when calculating arithmetic. Finally, information that may help us in the future goes into long-term memory, where it can last a lifetime. Long-term memory involves three processes: encoding, storage and retrieval. First we break new concepts into their composite parts to establish meaning. Furthermore, we include the context around us as we learn a new concept, or experience another episode in our life. For example, I might encode the phrase "delicious apple" with key descriptive ideas — red color, sweet taste, round shape, the crisp sound of a bite — and then such contextual items as '"I'm feeling good because it's a happy fall day and I'm picking apples.” Second, as we store the memory, we attach it to other related memories, like "similar to Granny Smith apples but sweeter," and thus, consolidate the new concept with older memories. Third, we retrieve the concept, by following some of the pointers that trace the various meaning codes and decoding the stored information to regain meaning. If I can't remember just what "delicious apple" means, I might activate any of the pointer-hints, such as "red" or "picking apples." Pointers connect with other pointers so one hint may allow me to recover the whole meaning.

Take Action!

Now you need to assess which of the 6 techniques are the most effective for YOU!

Rank the techniques 1-6 and start to use at least 3 immediately to ensure your revision is varied to keep you motivated!

WELL DONE! You now have the techniques to TRAIN your BRAIN to RETAIN!