Exam season survival guide: How to help your students succeed with revision

Term 3 is a big moment for senior students. For Year 12 students, their final school leaving exams are on the horizon, while Year 10 students become eligible for a Record of School Achievement (RoSA), if they’re not planning to complete Year 12.

With so many important exams coming up, it’s no wonder students are feeling the pressure. In fact, research from ReachOut found that 88% of students reported experiencing study-related stress over the past 12 months, with 55% saying they’ve felt extremely or very stressed about studying in the past two weeks. 

At a senior level, exam season stress is often the result of being concerned about not getting to live the life they’ve planned for themselves or being worried about how they’ll perform in comparison to their peers. 

As an educator, you have a powerful role to play in reducing exam season stress. By arming learners with the tailored resources, wellbeing support and revision strategies, you can boost classwide performance and helping students perform at their best, too. 

In this guide, we’ll cover:

• Why revision is key to improving exam performance 
• How to maximise the impact of revision for your students

• Tip 1. Share practical resources to help students manage their time 
• Tip 2: Use student data to inform your approach to revision 
• Tip 3: Take the guesswork out of individual revision
• Tip 4: Encourage students to adopt healthy study habits

Why revision is key to improving exam performance 

Students are introduced to a lot of new knowledge each term. When exam season rolls around, it can be difficult to easily retrieve infromation and remember how to apply it. 

With a tailored revision plan, learners can boost their confidence ahead of key assessment moments and proactively address knowledge gaps. 

As an educator designing purposeful practice for students shouldn’t be tedious or time consuming. With online learning platforms, like Atomi’s revision sessions, teachers can easily assign the right revision resources at speed and scale. 

Here’s how the right revision tools can enable students to deliver their best work during exams:

• Targeted, curriculum-specific challenges: Whether you want to give your entire class a refresher on a specific subject or deliver a tailored revision plan to a specific student, Atomi’s revision sessions tool makes it easy to build customised learning challenges that match the exact curriculum students will be measured up against in their exams.
  
• Reduce your workload: Rather than preparing your own practice questions or spending hours producing multiple choice quizzes, Atomi’s revision tools allow you to assign everything from refresher quizzes to extended responses and essays to supports in minutes.
  
• Differentiate with ease: With the ability to selecting different topics, question types and revision session lengths, catering to different student levels is simple with Atomi.  

How to maximise the impact of revision for your students

Ready to set your students up for success this exam season? Here are four practical revision strategies to consider. 

Tip 1. Share practical resources to help students manage their time

Time management is key to getting revision right—and students shouldn’t be left to figure it out on their own. 

As an educator, providing practical study schedules and suggested revision timetables can keep learners on track to prevent overwhelm ahead of exam season. In fact, creating a timeline is one of the study tips shared by Bede Taylor, a recent 99.45 ATAR graduate. 

In practical terms, consider:

• Creating a week-by-week study schedule that helps students revise course material in a strategic, manageable way
  
• Offer practical interactive topic checklists to help learners see progress and feel a sense of purpose when revising content
  
• Harness online learning platforms (like Atomi) to build customised revision plans, paired with Atomi videos and quizzes to gain instant feedback on how they’re going

Tip 2. Use student data to inform your approach to revision

According to our 2024 ‘Tech in schools’ report, 78% of teachers believe that technology plays a key role in supporting differentiated learning. 

When it comes to revision, adopting a differentiated approach ensures students receive revision material that is relevant to their areas of strength and weakness. 

With online learning platforms like Atomi, educators can quickly and easily assess how students are progressing through course material and gain valuable data to:

• Produce differentiated revision tasks for individual students to guide their independent study and put concerned parents at ease.
  
• Identify knowledge gaps and misconceptions at a whole class level and follow this up with explicit teaching techniques to focus on these areas before exam season. 

Ultimately, online learning tools make it easier to track exactly how students are going and ensure no one falls through the cracks.

Keep reading: Empower your students with practical study tips ahead of exam season with our complete guide to what not to do the week before exams.  

Tip 3. Take the guesswork out of individual revision 

When students are overwhelmed with course material, beating procrastination and getting started with revision can be tricky. With all learning material saved in one place, Atomi makes revision easy and enjoyable for students. 

As an educator, simplifying the path to revision for students can help your learners focus on what matters most: digesting, practising and putting new knowledge into action. 

In practical terms, here’s how Atomi makes revision simply for your students:

• Timely revision reminders are sent to student when it’s been a while since they reviewed a topic in Atomi to ensure learners don’t fall behind.
  
• Practice questions aligned with curriculum content makes it easier for students to get familiar with applying knowledge in an exam-style setting. ‍
• Customisable revision sessions makes it easy for you to build custom study plans for your learners, whether that’s focused on a specific topic or a whole subject.  

Atomi is a one-stop shop to help reduce procrastination and time-wasting among students. All the information they need for revision is at their fingertips, meaning students can jump straight in and start doing something in minutes.
- Sarah-Eleni Zaferis, Resident teacher and Product Enablement Specialist at Atomi

Tip 4. Encourage students to adopt healthy study habits

When students are stressed, it can be difficult to absorb and retain new knowledge. But by empowering your learners with practical tools and techniques to manage their stress levels, you can help your students develop healthy study habits. 

In practical terms, here’s how to support your student’s wellbeing during exam season:

• Sharing tips and practical resources with students will enable them to take the reins of their own mental health and wellbeing. 
  
• Printing posters and handouts that give students tips for navigating the acute symptoms of stress, such as deep breathing techniques to relieve stress.
  
• Provide access to proactive wellbeing resources like meditation apps, relaxing sleep playlists and even online support forms (like Beyond Blue, SANE or Reach Out).

Free resource: Download Atomi’s 2024 study plans and timetables 

Help your students master their final exams with our interactive study plans and timetables. No matter what exams they’re sitting this year, we’ve designed syllabus-specific study plans for your student’s six-week countdown to crunch time. Download now.

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