If you want to give your students a model revision time plan for them to either fill in or modify, feel free to use this one. Ensure students follow my recommended cycle of 45 minutes of practice and review, followed by 15 minutes of total rest. This allows students to break their day down into hourly cycles. Whist they may baulk at the hours hinted at by the plan, it fully lines up with research indicating 7 hours of revision per day is necessary to excel in the new GCSE and A-Level exams.

After coming to the sobering conclusion my year 11s had no idea where to start their revision, and judging that their parents were even worse, I decided to create something to solve the problem. The result was two easily understandable strategies, one for parents and one for students. Each fuses good old fashioned hard work with cutting edge metacognition research which students and parents immediately took to and adopted. This is without doubt the most important resource I have ever created and is one I think will have a huge impact not only in your department, but in your school as a whole. The strategy breaks the process of revision down into three phases. The first phase I call ‘knowledge acquisition’. This is where students use their ‘sources of knowledge’ such as textbooks, revision guides, personal notes and flashcards to acquire the foundational understanding they will need to answer exam questions. The most effective way of learning these key facts and information is through interleaving and spacing decks of flashcards. The second phase I call ‘knowledge application’. In this phase students apply everything they have learned about a particular topic to multiple sets of past paper questions on the same topic. This process allows students to mould their raw understanding of the topic to fit what the exam board requires them to write for any given question to score full marks. Importantly, this phase also ensures students practise knowledge retrieval which is crucial to success in their exams. The guide also recommends how students structure the day, splitting into hourly cycles consisting of 45 minutes of practice and review, and 15 minutes of rest which repeat through the day. In order for this phase to work effectively, you need to create sets of past paper questions for students to attempt which is organised by each section of the course you are teaching. Exam question banks like ExamPro are perfect for putting these together easily and quickly. The final phase of my revision strategy is called ‘knowledge demonstration’. Here, students demonstrate everything they have learned and practiced in full past papers which are to be sat in exam conditions, and of course the final public exam itself. My guide emphasises the importance of reflection on performance, positive mentality and effective exam technique. Whilst this sounds incredibly straightforward when explained in these terms, students, parents and even colleagues struggled to conceptualise revision in a straightforward manner. I really believe this guide has had a significant impact on my students’ confidence, and has been modified for use in other departments, which you can also do in your own schools. Students and parents often comment on how it made revision so much more straightforward, and allowed students to ‘roadmap’ their time. I hope you will find it as integral to your KS4 teaching as I have!

This is a straightforward comprehension exercise inviting students to examine in detail the two primary causes of urbanisation, natural increase and rural-urban migration using Mumbai as a case study. Students round off the exercise by implementing what they’ve learned to complete a past exam question, all of which is included in the ‘Planner’ file.

Best printed on A3, this resource allows students to review the whole of the Living World section of the AQA GCSE Geography course in one place. The revision supersheet features questions, graphs and diagrams from all sections of the topic, ensuring students revise comprehensively and effectively. Can be modified easily to suit any other case studies you may have chosen.

This resource is ideal if you need to cover coastal processes and landforms efficiently or with a lower prior attaining group. It covers the primary processes which form our coastal landscapes and provides clear illustration of the formation of both erosional landforms including stacks and wave cut platforms and depositional landforms such as bars, spits, tombolos and bays in beaches. I recommend it be printed on A3 to allow students to include as much detail as possible in their explanations. Students are required to complete the diagrams and explanations to show the formation process. Best completed following a video or class discussion on the processes.

I created this comprehensive resource after finding my students struggled to understand how human and physical factors influenced the shape of hydrographs which is likely to be a popular question in the new GCSEs owing to its ‘trickiness’. The sheet encourages students to sketch sets of hydrographs after changing one human or physical aspect of the drainage basin. It then poses a scenario which students have to analyse and make recommendations upon. The worksheet then concludes with an exam question focusing on the influence of human and physical on drainage basins. Children and colleagues really valued this resource as it gave them an opportunity to increase student confidence and exposure to a range of different questions in this area.

A handy diagram clearly outlining to students what can be the complex categorisation of different types of weathering and erosion. Can be easily differentiated by replacing some of the labels with gap fills, or leaving the explanations blank and requiring students to write a description of how each weathering/erosion process operates. Ensure students tick the boxes to indicate whether each process is an example of weathering or erosion.

Created a rivers assessment for KS3 which was compact enough to be deployed the and results marked by students within 60 minutes. Test is designed for quick knowledge retrieval with sections of extended writing where necessary to test understanding of extended processes. Can be deployed regularly over a term or multiple terms to refresh and re-test student understanding.

This resource should be used in conjunction with the Channel 4 documentary ‘Britain’s Worst Weather: Flood’. It provides a basic structure for students to note the key components of five of the UK’s major flood events. Students found it exceptionally helpful to have a number of different case studies, broken down into their key parts. This resource can be easily built upon by then giving students a selection of mock exam questions based on the content on the sheet.

A handy gap fill task to introduce students to the natural causes of climate change.

Students loved completing this assignment which required them to research Scott and Amundsen’s race to the South Pole, and use the information gathered to write a contemporary newspaper report of the outcome. This resource can be easily differentiated by either providing the partially completed newspaper structure bundled with the task, or allowing students free rein to create their own newspaper structure. Encourage students to make it their own by tea staining or tearing the work slightly to make it look even more original!

Can be deployed either under urbanisation at KS3 or changing economic world at KS4, this homework task introduces students to foundational economics with an emphasis on how countries’ and cities’ economies move from relying primarily on the primary sector through to the quaternary. This is a great resource if you need to introduce students to the way out economies change over time. The case study used is Birmingham, but this can be easily modified to suit your SoW.

This homework assignment is aimed at higher prior attaining classes and encourages students to independently explore the relationship between the commercial activities of one of their favorite fast food restaurants and the environment it depends upon to turn a profit. Whether or not McDonald’s has cleaned up its act or not, this resource is guaranteed to get your students thinking more deeply about the choices they make every day.

This resource is ideal for reviewing key geographical skills and the rivers topic with KS3 classes. It includes a review of key definitions, continents grid references, latitude and longitude and the foundational concepts at the heart of the rivers topic. The resource features high quality, academically rigorous tasks which students can either complete independently or as a class. This resource is a lifesaver if you need a clearly structured and effective revision lesson, or can be adapted to form a test or assessment. It can also be easily differentiated by substituting prose for gap fill, or multiple choice responses for some questions.

This resource contains over 20 questions and model answers for the AQA GCSE Paper 3 Decision Making Exercise component. There are almost 4000 words worth of high quality, level 9 model responses, perfect for the high prior attaining students you need to push to achieve top marks. This resource can either be deployed in class, as you work through the responses with students, or set as an independent preparation task. However you choose to use it, it’s guaranteed to push your students to develop detailed and articulate responses in preparation for their paper 3 examination.