GCSE Geography Revision Questionnaire: 2 of 4

Second of 4 posts summarising the 94 responses I had to my GCSE Geography revision questionnaire that I had on a Google Form earlier in the year....


The second part of the questionnaire asked teachers and students to assess the value of various common methods of revision.


I asked students to rate them on a scale from 1 to 5, where 1 was never used / not useful and 5 was always used / really useful


Here are the average scores for each of the methods....


Copying out Notes: 2.4
Summarising Notes: 3.7
Flash Cards: 3.4
Revision Sessions at School: 4
BBC Bitesize: 3.2
Practising past paper: 4.3


The next question produced some very lengthy responses from some respondees, some of which are repeated below.
I hope that these might be useful for some last minute revision as we move into exam season after the May Day Bank Holiday....


How else do you revise / help students revise other than what has already been mentioned ?


I don't have room to go through them all here, but will be using some of them for future posts for purchasers of the Badger GCSE Book....


One teacher provided a 7 point programme for revision, which sounds quite useful:

Usual exam practice in class with students goes like this... 

(1) Deconstruct question by examining command words. 

(2) Identify content that needs to be addressed in the answer

(3) Generate a writing frame

(4) Have a go at writing an answer

(5) Peer assess work

(6) Compare with a model answer 

(7) Identify individual points for improvement.

Here's another sample of the respondees ideas that I particularly liked... a quick ten to kick us off...

1. Pass the parcel exam question answer formation

2. I use a lot of spider diagram / mind maps over a single sheet of A3 per section - colour them, use images etc

3. Blog with daily 20 minute activities in the run up to the exam

4. Dart board games - checkout requires students to hit the correct words in order.

5. Rely on good classroom teaching!

6. We have an integrated system of GCSE revision which we are gradually building. I have written 3 revision guides - one for each unit - specifically tailored to the course and the case studies we use - they are quite chunky but they become active workbooks during the revision lessons

7. Dealing with dyslexics - we make audio recordings for them to listen to on their MP3

8. Tarsia puzzles

9. Ridiculous actions to remember things 

10.  Visual prompts around school (this idea features in the Badger book with some examples....)

Next post - which topics are the 'hardest to revise' ??

GCSE Geography Revision Questionnaire: 1 of 4

Earlier in the year, as part of the preparation for the publication of the new Badger GCSE Grade Booster book (have I mentioned that  ?) I put a GCSE Revision Questionnaire online as a Google Form.

The Badger book has a section on using Google Docs to help revision by the way.

In this and the next three posts, I shall go through the results that came in.

Thanks to the 94 people who answered the questions...
There were 64 teachers and 30 students (thanks to Liz Smith's class who answered the questions in particular)

Specifications being taught (teacher responses only)

AQA A: 17 - the most popular

AQA B: 7

Edexcel A: 5

Edexcel B: 10

OCR A: 3

OCR B: 12 - the 2nd most popular

WJEC A: 5

WJEC B: 3

CCEA: 1

iGCSE: 1

Websites used to help with revision

BBC will be pleased to hear that BBC Bitesize got 65 mentions, the most of any other website by a long way.

S-Cool: 21

Nings: 8

You Tube: 2

Geography all the Way: 5

Anthony Bennett's seminal Internet Geography: 5

Cool Geography: 6

GeoBytesGCSE (Rob Chambers): 1

SAM Learning - mentioned by some of the students but not the teachers - probably relates to a school subscription

Funky Geography: Liz Smith’s blog

BBC Class Clips: 3

Staffordshire Learning Net and Forum: 5

Terry Jones also shared some Revision Flashcards on SLN: http://learningnet.co.uk/geoforum/index.php?topic=7122.0

Well done to Henry Scott for starting his own revision blog too....

Letts Revise: 1

Geography Lost: 1

School's own VLE: 7

Abbeyfield Humanities Blog got 2 mentions - nice work by Mr. Drake

Blythe Bridge School website - which apparently has "good revision sheets": 1

Share Geography: 1 

Geography Clinic: 1

Worldlywise Wiki from Chesterton Community College: 2

GeographyPods.com: 1

Revision World: 2

Revision Centre: 2

Geographyfieldwork.com: 1

NGFL: 1

Kerboodle: 1

Radical Geography: 1

NGFL Wales: 1

BBC News: 2

Edmodo: 1

TES: 3

In the next 3 posts: 

- how best to revise - techniques and tips from colleagues

- which topics are hardest to revise ?

- how can smartphones and apps help revision ?

And of course you know what to do if stuck for ideas....

Using Google Forms

One of the sections in the forthcoming book for Badger explores the use of GOOGLE FORMS, with some suggestions for how they can be used, as part of the GOOGLE DOCS suite.
An element of 'getting better grades' is appropriate preparation for the written examination which comes at the end of the course.
The use of web tools can help with revision, and also other aspects of the teaching of the course.
With that in mind, as an example in the book, I have produced a Google Form to gather information, to show how it can be used to produce real data that can then be displayed and visualised.

The form is embedded below, and I would be really grateful if you could spend a few minutes filling it in, and if you find yourself in a room with some computers and a GCSE group to ask them to spend a few minutes filling it in too. It would be really great to get hundreds of responses that can then be shared to give a snapshot of the current thoughts on GCSE REVISION


Alternatively direct your students to this web address: http://bit.ly/gcserevision
You can fill the form in your browser by following this link, which can also be shared with colleagues....


It would be great to see hundreds of people filling this in, both staff and students.


Thanks in advance for your help.

If you are a teacher, please add your e-mail address into the final box along with your location, and I'll enter you into a prize draw which I shall draw on the 1st of April and one person (or maybe more than one if I'm feeling flush) will win a copy of my KS3 Toolkit book "Look at it this Way" (whether they want it or not...)

Thinking Tools & Google Docs

I'm working today on some pages for the Badger GCSE book which focus on some Thinking Tools.

These are small strategies for putting together some ideas and making sense of them. There are lots of strategies that have been featured in other books, so my challenge is to provide a geographical twist on some of these, and to try to identify the ones which I think will work best to support GCSE Geographers.
The nature of geography means that there are certain of these graphic organisers which perhaps will work better in the classroom, or for recapping outside the classroom.

I've also been working on some pages on the use of Google Forms (one of the Google Docs)
These are now getting increasingly useful.
If you, or your students are over the age of 13, you should really have a Google Account so that you can have access to these tools, even if you don't use the other elements of a GMail etc.

Many schools, my wife's school included, have switched to GMail for their main staff accounts.

Google Forms allow for many uses - a collaborative document started by Tom Barrett provides a great deal of inspiration for possible uses, some of which are developed further in the book...