Best Strategies for Revision: Overcome the Attention Span Handicap

OVERCOME THE ATTENTION SPAN HANDICAP:

• Psychologists have observed that student’s attention span ranges from anywhere between 5 mins to 20 mins. This attention span could vary according to motivation, mood, perceived relevance of the material, and other factors. To beat this handicap, every time you feel distracted or find your mind wandering, you must consciously bring it back to the task at hand and re-focus. Setting a target of 45 mins to 1 hour of serious study/revision time also helps at keeping focus.
• Introduce short breaks of 10 minutes after every 45 mins to 1 hour of focused studying. During the 10-minute break, try’stretching’ activities, a short nap of 10 mins, relaxing by deep breathing, listening to some soothing music etc. Stay away from distracting activities like checking your phone for messages or updates, browsing social media,calling a friend etc.
• Plan your revision time and your study time.Your study-time is indeed the hour when you are trying to learn facts. Revision time is when you try to retrieve those learnt facts. Never mix the two. A tried and tested method Is to revise the previously learnt facts of a subject, before beginning to study the same subject for newer facts and concepts. And, to assign half an hour of revision time after you have finished studying the subject. This is the best method to sustain and retrieve old facts in your memory as well as seamlessly adding new facts without causing an overload of information and confusion in your mind.

E.g. TIME TABLE – Monday 4 pm to 6:30 pm Geography.

• Conduct regular Self-Assessed tests on your knowledge. Quiz yourself, Practice previous exam papers, or ask your parent to ask you questions pertaining to the content you have learnt. This will help you check for any gaps in knowledge.
• Teach what you have learnt someone. You could request your parent or a friend to allow you to teach them the concept/s you have learnt. Teaching someone requires you to learn and organize your knowledge in a clear and structured manner.
• Studies reveal that students learn quickly when they can visualize a concept while studying. This is because the brain shows more partiality to remembering any information that it receives through its “visual senses” over printed words.

E.g. Biology Diagrams, Chemistry or Statistics formulas can be learnt by visualising that you are writing and re-writing the diagram or formula in the air on an imaginary board. History, English lessons etc can all be memorized like a story and the contents of the stories can be re-imagined during revision time.

Read more about: Understand Your Child’s Learning Pattern