WEEKLY STUDY TECHNIQUES THAT ACTUALLY IMPROVE YOUR GRADES ✅

If you’re taking A-level biology, or any A-level course, something you may have been told to do throughout your term is consolidate, but what is consolidating? How can you use it to your advantage to help you achieve those top grades? If you want to find out what consolidating is all about, and how it is the key to getting your A*, keep reading! 

WHAT IS CONSOLIDATION?

Consolidation is different techniques that you use post-lesson to check you’ve understood the topic and to ensure the content will be embedded into your long-term memory.

HOW LONG SHOULD YOU CONSOLIDATE?

Consolidation should be done ideally for one hour per week per subject. Let’s say you’re taking 4 A-level courses, you should be doing one hour of consolidation per subject, totalling around 4 hours of consolidation per week. You don’t need to consolidate after every lesson, but the longer you wait to complete your consolidation, the more likely you are to begin to forget that information. 

DON’T BELIEVE ME? TAKE A LOOK AT EBBINHAUS’ FORGETTING CURVE WITHOUT CONSOLIDATION VS WITH CONSOLIDATING:

Without:

With:

Now, consolidation shouldn’t be just one technique, but multiple. This improves your long-term memory, keeps it more interesting, and creates different skills for when it is time to do your exam!

HERE ARE 4 CONSOLIDATION TECHNIQUES YOU CAN USE TO HELP YOU CONSOLIDATE YOUR LEARNING:

Pro-tip: I do NOT recommend exam questions as a form of consolidation. Consolidation is more helpful for building your understanding, whereas exam questions are a test of that understanding. So do these techniques first, and then once you feel confident you understand the material, test your knowledge with exam questions. 

TECHNIQUE #1 – FLASHCARDS

Flashcards should not be a small card with all of your information on it, that is just squeezing all of your notes onto a small piece of paper. A flashcard should have one key idea in which you test that key idea on each card. This isolates your understanding of the topic, with helps you narrow down if you do or do not understand that topic. 

Information to put on flashcards includes definitions, reactions, and key terms.

The main source of information for your flashcards should be your notes (if you have my A-level biology notes this will make the process a lot quicker for you). Look throughout your notes and find key terms, or if you have my A-level biology notes, the key terms will be at the top corner of the page; this should tell you what the flashcards should be for that topic.

I love this technique for many reasons, the main one being that this technique doubles as a revision resource. So now when it comes to doing revision prep, instead of spending hours making flashcards, you’ve already made them and can go right into testing yourself!

One lesson in A-level biology should have you making anywhere between 5 -10 flashcards. I use what’s called the Leitner system when it comes to using my flashcards. The Leitner system is where you go through your cards, and separate them based on which cards you got correct and which ones you didn’t. The ones you didn’t, practise again the next day, vs the ones you got correct you practise again in 3 days. If you want to see me show you exactly how to use this technique, and how I use every technique in this blog post, watch this Youtube video.

TECHNIQUE #2 – BLURTING

Blurting is the next great technique you can use to help consolidate your learning. To blurt, you set yourself a timer of about 5 minutes and write down everything you can remember about the topic from memory alone. This does not and in fact should not be neat. Once your timer has gone off, you then check with your notes what information you have that’s correct, and what information you have that’s incorrect. The information that is incorrect, add in or correct with a brightly coloured pen. This should help you remember. Complete another blurt in 3 days’ time, and then again after about a week, and you should see yourself remembering more and more each time. You should do one blurt per lesson, so a total of around 5 blurts per week. 

TECHNIQUE #3 – CREATING A STUDY GROUP 

Creating a study group is a great way to consolidate, especially if you enjoy the social aspect of learning, and struggle with staying motivated and focused. Having a group of like-minded individuals, who can hold each other accountable can be incredibly beneficial! Study groups work best with no more than around 4-5 people. The key to a successful study group is actively testing each other. In a study group, you don’t silently sit together and do your own work but work together to improve everyone’s memory and understanding. 

TECHNIQUE #4 – PICTURE TO TEXT

In this technique, instead of wasting time rewriting your notes, use your textbook, and where you have a chunk of text, turn it into an image to visually cement it in your mind. This tests that you really understood what you have learned. You can also flip this around and take an image, and turn it into a paragraph or bullet point list. Head on over to this YouTube video for more information. 

HOW TO MANAGE YOUR TIME: CONSOLIDATION

Now, you may be saying to yourself the techniques are great, but where am I going to find the time to fit them into my already busy schedule? You may have a part-time job, extracurricular activities, or home responsibilities, and find the task of adding 4 hours into your week may feel extremely daunting. If this is the case, check out this youtube video I have created on how to manage your time to get top A-level results. 

Also, you may already be participating in consolidation, and not even realize it. Your teacher giving you homework in the form of questions and activities is a form of consolidation. They may not specifically tell you that it is, but it is. However, this only works as true consolidation if you are making sure you are putting your full effort into that homework. 

IN CONCLUSION…

I hope you found this blog post helpful. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me via my social media, and make sure you follow my YouTube channel for more helpful tips to help you get your top grades in A-level biology!

MORE OF A VISUAL LEARNER?

Be sure to get out my YouTube video on this exact topic!

Happy studying!

-Miss Estruch