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Top ten tips to help students with exam revision

Blog
The YPO Team
29 May 2025

Exam season can be highly challenging and stressful for students, often resulting in students experiencing negative emotional responses like overwhelm and anxiety. According to a recent survey done by Save My Exams, 85% of British students have experienced some form of exam anxiety, and this is a notable increase from recent findings by the National Education Unio (NEU), who reported that 54% of pupils were exhibiting signs of exam anxiety.

Similarly, this article from Save My Exams explains that 1 in 4 students describe exam season as ‘unbearable’, ranking their anxiety levels as an 8 or above, when ranked from 1 (very calm) to 10 (unmanageable anxiety).

Exam season may have these negative connotations due to the revision mountain that comes with it. For some students, it may feel like time is running out or you see them slipping into panic mode when doing exam preparations; in addition to worrying about the content that requires revision, it can also be stressful for them to decide how to revise effectively.

To guide your students through exam revision, we have listed some strategic exam revision techniques that will definitely get them through those tiring revision sessions!

1. Utilise mind maps

By creating their own mind map to connect ideas, keywords and images, this simple exam revision technique can boost creative thinking, elevate active recall abilities, and allow your students to study in a more visualised way when trying to memorise essential information. By offering ordinary plain card, they’ll be able to retain information quicker and also be able to break down complex ideas and concepts.

2. Test your peers

A great way for your pupils to revise effectively is to offer record index cards or flash cards for easy consolidation of content. As a proven method of reinforcing knowledge, these cards are a staple during exam season and the multiple colours can be associated to different subjects. Simply encourage them to condense the main revision content into clear bullet points and trigger words, then they can begin to test their peers in class. This is an excellent revision tip that will surely work if they try it!

3. Make it enjoyable

Exam revision can sometimes seem tedious if not done in an enjoyable, relaxing environment. You should make sure that you are creating this type of studying space at school so that students can gain a lifelong, positive attitude towards learning and feel relaxed. A few ways to make exam preparations more pleasant could be allowing your students to revise with their friends at a new location or playing an online, collaborative quiz in the classroom.

4. Add some colour

Often, revision material and the notes that are taken can become difficult to read or comprehend if they are all in one colour. Also, who doesn’t love colour co-ordinated notes? Along with their notes looking more interesting, it can also make the content more digestible and memorable for them. By using our varied selection of coloured pens, highlighter pens and coloured tabs, you can help students to stimulate the brain and link key topics and categories together.

5. Reduce distractions

Whilst revising for exams, anything can easily become a distraction! The best thing to do if you see your students slowly becoming distracted by something nearby is to quickly eliminate the item from your classroom environment. A big distraction can be their smart devices, as they are known to produce and release dopamine, leading to the desire of using it for long. You could hide these distractions somewhere that is out of reach and ensure that all their focus and attention is going into their revision. Having a quiet place to study in, such as the library, is also important to have, ensuring there are no loud disturbances or background noise.

6. Digest it in chunks

When it comes to exam revision, it can be easy to get lost in the world of notes. If this does happen to your students, not to worry! You can help them organise their notes carefully and simultaneously, so that all their notes for different subjects and modules are kept tidy and separate. Products like notepads with dividers or subject dividers are handy resources to have in this case as it enables an easier, hassle-free approach for organising study notes. Our subject dividers have 10 different coloured tabs, providing a visual approach to sorting papers by subject or category.

7. Offer regular breaks

Taking regular breaks between revision sessions are highly important when it comes to revising for prolonged periods of time. Not only will it boost your students’ overall concentration levels and memory, but it will also allow them to maintain momentum and stay energised throughout the revision sessions. Regular breaks are also great for young people’s health and well-being, helping to destress and relax their mind and body throughout. The Pomodoro Technique is an effective time management method that you can use; pick a task, set a timer for 25 minutes, work on the task until the timer rings, take a 5-minute break, and repeat. After four sessions, take a longer break for 15-30 minutes.

8. Go sticky note crazy

When it comes to exam preparation, noting down key words, phrases and topics can allow your students to successfully simplify, learn and retain any type of information. By providing them with sticky notes, they are more likely to remember content as this note-taking method promotes active learning and the colour-coding potential that it comes with can allow for easy subject differentiation. A key benefit of using sticky notes is that they are highly versatile, allowing your students to place them anywhere as frequent reminders!

9. Manage their stress and anxiety

Evidently, exam revision can often result in pupils feeling stressed and anxious if not done properly. Effective tips to help manage this is offering regular breaks, snacks and regular check-ins to support your students. Another key thing to remember is that by starting class revision early on in advance, this helps to manage stress and anxiety as they would feel more prepared when entering exam season. By planning your revision teaching content early on, you will give your students plenty of time to review all material, identify any areas that need work, and seek appropriate help if needed. Ultimately, this will avoid students doing ineffective revision habits such as cramming the night before or not setting achievable goals.

10. Scribble away

Our last tip for you is an important one that can often be overlooked. By simply jotting down notes using a whiteboard and whiteboard markers, students can create notes without having to worry about neatness or making mistakes. This method is ideal for group collaborations, active recall, mapping out, and connecting words, ideas, and topics together. Revising this way can also help you to mix it up and break up the tedium.

We hope you find these tips helpful for your exam revision sessions that you have coming up. For more relevant products and resources, check out our exam and revision essentials page here.

Good luck to all the students sitting their exams this season!

Author

The YPO Team

YPO supplies products and services to a wide range of customers including schools, local authorities, charities, emergency services, public sector and other businesses such as nurseries and care homes. YPO are 100% publicly owned, by 13 local authorities, which means the profits made are returned to public sector customers, delivering even better value for money.