My top 5 A* History Revision Tips

Hello Everyone!

I've had a month off to rest and recallibrate before the start of the new academic year, so I thought I'd kick it off with a series on how I revised for my A levels in order to get 3A* grades! Although neither History nor English is specificly language-focused, I've recieved a lot of questions about this, so I thought I'd temporarily deviate from my usualy content in order to answer you questions!

Disclaimer: everyone learns differently, and has to find their own ways to introduce, understand and learn content. These methods may not work for you, so let me know what your favourite revision tips in the commtents below!

1 - Introduce, understand, use and learn.

In the revision community, the emphasis is often put on the 'learning' or 'memorisation' section of the learning process. However, this is only one part of the road to top grades, especially once you get to A level History! Before you try to memorise facts, you should first introduce, understand and then use the information you have!

Introduce: Put the topic into perspective. What else is generally going on in the world? What point of the course are you at? What signigicant events have happened so far? Who is in power?

Understand: Understanding is key to history. Events and topics can be complex, so asking your teacher questions, reading articles and books, and generally researching parts of the course that you don't understand as well as you'd like, is essential!

Use: Not only will you learn a lot of facts by writing practice essays and paragraphs, but it will also help you practice the evaluative essay technique you need for exam success!

Memorise: Learning the facts is a necessary step, but it's so much easier when you understand them and how they can be used in essays!

2 - Learn at your own pace.

If we wait until we're in the lesson itself to introduce each topic, we're committing ourselves to learn at the pace that the course is taught, squeezing in revision where we can, and often feeling very overwhelmed by how fast lessons are! Instead, try making your textbook notes before the lesson, rereading them immediately before the lesson, and then using the class time itself to clear up any questions you have, and to add to your notes! You'll be able to manage tasks so much more easily if you already know the topic a bit better, and homework will be easier too!

3 - Timelines are your friends.

Timelines put information into perspective, and make it easier to see how different facts relate to one another. Rather than using flashcards, I therefore put all the information that I would have put on a flashcard, but put it into a timeline instead (https://getrevising.co.uk/grids/3-political-impact-on-german-nationalism ) which I was then able to use as an essay plan. Of course, thematic, very full timelines aren't for everyone, but even just putting key events into a timeline can really help you to understand the course!

4 - BLURT

I initially heard about the 'blurt' revision technique from Unjaded Jade's youtube channel a few years ago. But I think it's a really good way to not only memorise facts, but also to work lut essay plans. The technique is as follows:

1. Choose a topic or essay title that you want to test yourself on.

2. Spend 5-7 minutes writing down (from memory!) as much information as possible that relates to that topic or question. If I'm doing it for an essay question, I also like to divide the info into paragraphs such as an economic, political, and religious. The info itself can include dates, facts, keywords, key events and key individuals.

3. Use your notes and the internet to correct and add to the information on your blurt. This also means that, if you're doing an essay plan and realise that you don't have enough information in your notes to write a paragraph on any particular topic, you can easily go and find enough info! I aim to have 9 facts for each 'paragraph'.

4. The above can take up to 20 mins, but I like to repeat the process after I've finished to check that I actually can remember more. This time, research isn't required, so repeating just helps to solidify your new facts and paragraph groupings into your head better. This isn't an instagrammable technique, but it really works!

5 - Practice essays and paragraphs!

Once writing a particular type of essay becomes second nature, the exam becomes fairly easy, because you're just slotting information into essay structures that you have in your head. Particularly in the lead up to my history mock exams, I wrote a practice essay or paragraph almost every day just to practice the structure. Plus, writing an essay or paragraph at the end of a revision session really helps you to remember the topic! If you feel like you know the topics but still don't get essay marks that you're happy with, this is particularly useful - ask your teacher how they recommend structuring an essay (or even for a really good exemplar!) and use that to help you develop better structure and evaluative technique in your essays. Doing this took me from a steady B to an A* in my mock exam, so I hope it'll help you too!

As you might be able to tell, I really emphasise understanding when it comes to history. This is simply because feeling overwhelmed stops you frombeing able to learn facts or write good evaluation. Spending the time understanding the course means that you'll know whart you need to learn, and be more than ready by the time exams come!