- One of the things we sometimes forget
to tell you in school is how to spend your time studying.
So, knowing how to spend a block of time, an hour of time,
actually studying so you get something out at the end of it
can be really, really hard.
So, here I'm going to show you how to break your time down
into small chunks so that you get the best out of an hour.
The first five minutes of an hour I would need to spend
faffing around and getting stuff sorted,
getting stuff organized.
So, you've got all the text books you need,
you've got all the papers you need,
the questions you need, you've got the pens you need,
you've got something to drink
and that your phone is far, far away from you,
unless you're using it as a timer.
Because once you get everything sorted,
once you get everything organized,
once you have everything you need in one place,
I want you to set a timer on your phone
and I want it to be for 25 minutes.
Now, you can just set this as a simple timing function
or there are loads and loads of apps out there
that will lock down your phone for 25 minutes
and there are some that give you a reward
if you don't touch your phone for 25 minutes
so, those are the only circumstances
you can have your phone on your desk.
The rest of the time your phone has to be somewhere else.
For the next 25 minutes,
what I want you to do is to be making notes,
whether that's making notes from a video,
whether it's making notes from a textbook,
whether it's making notes from a study guide,
I want you to be making notes.
This can be in a mind map format,
it can be in a flash card format,
doing it with flash cards.
You can be typing these up, you can be writing these down
but don't just read and highlight,
I want you to be doing something,
I want you to be making your own set of notes.
So, you can use a guide, you can use the videos,
but don't just sit there and read it
or don't just sit there and watch it.
You need to be doing something with this time.
This 25 minutes is going to be going over knowledge,
maybe learning something new,
maybe going over something you did a year ago
or something you're not very familiar with.
So we need to have no distractions during this time,
you're going to be focused on one topic.
Once you've done that 25 minutes of study
and don't spend too much longer than 25 minutes
because your brain doesn't like it.
Your brain wants to have a break,
your brain wants to move on to doing something different.
Once you've done 25 minutes, have a break.
And I don't just mean sit at your desk
checking WhatsApp or talking with your friends,
I mean have an actual break.
Get up from your desk, go downstairs, make a cup of tea,
go and get a drink, go to the toilet.
You can go downstairs and check your phone
but don't just stay sitting at your desk.
I want you to change environments when we do this.
I want you to go somewhere and do something different,
but only for five minutes.
In the 25 minutes that we have left of this hour,
what I want you to be doing is testing yourself.
So, this can either be on the stuff you did
in the previous 25 minutes, testing yourself on that,
so, doing as many questions as you can,
doing past paper questions,
testing yourself possibly on the flash cards you've made,
but this has to be a different style of activity
to what you've been doing the previous 25 minutes,
so we're not making notes,
we're using the notes to answer a question.
Because, remember this isn't a test,
we're still learning stuff at this stage.
So if you have a question, you try and answer it,
you think maybe you've got two or three of the points,
you can go back to your notes,
look up where you wrote your notes,
try and improve on your answer to maybe get
three or four of the points
and then go and mark it form the mark scheme
and work out which bits you didn't include the first time,
which bits you weren't 100% on.
This isn't a test,
it's not cheating to go and look stuff up.
We're still learning,
so don't feel you have to spend 25 minutes
under test conditions,
putting yourself under a lot of pressure,
this isn't a test, okay?
It's not cheating to go and look stuff up.
Then when you get to the end of the 25 minutes,
just make a quick note of stuff that you are okay with,
so you can say, "Yep, I know this now,"
or just make a quick note of the stuff
that you're kind of like, "Oh, I really, really struggled
"with this question,"
and you can go over that again at a different point.
Now, those two 25 minute blocks,
so making the notes and the practicing what you've learnt,
don't actually have to be linked,
they don't have to be on the same topic.
You can spend 25 minutes making notes on Physics
and then do 25 minutes of Chemistry questions
that were a set of notes you did a previous day.
So, they don't have to be linked together.
You can give yourself 24 hours, 48 hours,
in between making the notes
and doing the questions on those notes.
Now, I know some of you are going to say
that you will forget it over that time,
but if you give yourself a break, a couple of hours break,
or an overnight, two overnight break,
then your brain's going to have more time
to absorb the information.
It's going to be turning form short-term memory,
which is what it will be if you test yourself
straight after making notes, into long-term memory.
And this is what we need for the exam,
we need the knowledge to be in your long-term memory.
So, there we go guys,
if you weren't sure how to spend your time studying
that is how you do it.
Five minutes getting yourself organized,
25 minutes making notes,
five minute break to go and get a cup of coffee
and then 25 minutes of questions,
practicing, applying stuff that you've learnt,
applying stuff from your notes.
Good luck, guys,
I know this is a really, really stressful time,
I know how hard all of you are working
and I am so, so proud of each and every single one of you.