How much revision and when to start?

[Blue_Marigold]

My DD has started revising for her mocks (December) and she has made a timetable which requires her to recap 6 topics a night spending 1 hour in total (10 minutes per topic). Does this sound like enough?

She is doing it which is good and to be fair to her, it seems she is taking her revision very seriously.

Some things to consider are that her school started the syllabus in Year 9 and so most of this year is revising at school as they will complete syllabus by December.

Talking to my friends who have children doing the 11+, they do more revision than my DD and this is worrying me.

[kenyancowgirl]

If it helps, DS2 did about 2 hours (max) a week Feb half term till Easter, and then over Easter holidays about 3 hours a day, and an hour a night max from Easter holidays, for his real ones - he literally couldn't have done better - it is the quality of the revision that is important, not the quantity. One hour focussed work, is far better than 3 hours messing about and psychologist studies show that most people have a true concetration of 45 minutes in one hour and no more.

[KB]

It really is a piece of string question.

If they are revising from after the mocks in school then I wouldn't worry too much. Plenty of time to put things right.

I would question the very short (10 min) time slots.
There's a danger of rushing through to keep to time and not properly absorbing the material.

Mocks are a good opportunity to practice revision skills. Has she had guidance on different ways to revise?

I think this ties in with kenyancowgirl, that its quality
over quantity.

[MrsChubbs]

Agree with other 2. Quality over quantity. 1 hour of creating beautifully copied out notes will not be as productive as 1 hour of testing herself on knowledge identifying what she doesn't know and then learning that.

[Moon unit]

I think an hour at this stage sounds fine.
I’d be wary of revising in 10 minute slots.
That having been said the mocks are all about learning what to change for the real thing.
My DS did well but I don’t actually remember him revising for the mocks at all.
He did however work very,very hard from the end of Feb half term.

[loobylou]

My DD did her GCSEs last year and did extremely well.
She did no revision before the Christmas holidays (January mocks) because they had homework from school (which all felt useful and relevant). She revised about 4-5 hours a day for the Christmas holidays with a few days off for family things and sales shopping.
She then didn't do much before the Easter holidays because again schoolwork took over (but obviously a lot of that was very useful).
She worked really hard from the Easter holidays - 6 hours a day at least with a couple of days off.
I think she could have worked a bit less and got the same results but she was happy with how much she did.

[Ell M]

What revisions methods your children are using? My DS seems not very confided in his revision methods.