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Top Tips for Religious Education Revision

Dawn Cox, Series Editor and Religious Education Teacher shares her tips for revising for GCSE Religious Studies using Oxford Revise.

1.Knowledge

It’s really important that you know exactly what you need to revise. It’s a good idea to look at past papers, but make sure you are looking at the right exam board and specification. Check with your teacher if you aren’t sure.

Once you know the board and specification you are doing, you can plan what knowledge you need to cover in your revision sessions. My suggestion is that you chunk it into smaller parts, so in each revision session you can cover specific knowledge. For example:

Session 1:

  • Christianity practices
      1. Eucharist
      2. Baptism

Session 2:

  • Christianity beliefs
      1. The Trinity
      2. The nature of God

Once you have revised the knowledge, you need to do something with it! I recommend creating your own revision flash cards. You can use them in a few different ways:

    1. Reduce the knowledge from the revision guide into bullet points
    2. Write questions on one side (and then answers on the other) that covers the knowledge that you’re revising
    3. Put keywords on one side and definitions on the other

You can then start your retrieval!

2. Retrieval

In the Oxford Revise guides we have written plenty of questions to test your knowledge on the topic you’ve just read about. To get started on retrieving the knowledge, get a piece of paper and write down the question numbers. Cover up the answers. Then try and answer the questions. Then, before you look at the answers, go back to the knowledge either in the revision guide or on your revision cards and fill in any gaps. Then check the answers.

You can also ask a friend or family member to ask you the questions. They can help you by giving clues if you need them.

You can also use the revision cards for retrieval. Remember, don’t turn over the card until you’ve answered the question. It’s a good idea to say the answer out loud so you don’t turn it over before you’ve thought of the answer!

3. Practice

And finally, it’s really important to practise exam questions!

For each topic we have given you examples of the different questions you will get in the exam. Again, get some paper and try to answer the questions. If you need to, go back to the knowledge papers and/or your revision cards and check if there’s anything more you can add to your answers. Look at the question tips to also help you answer the questions in the correct way.

Finally, check our suggested answers to see if you’ve included the points in your answers. You might have covered other possible answers at school so don’t worry if you have included things that we haven’t mentioned.

 

Don’t forget, plan your revision based using the Knowledge, Retrieval and Practice method from Oxford Revise and you will be helping yourself to remember the knowledge needed for your exam. Good luck!

Revision books

AQA GCSE Religious Studies A: Christianity and Islam

Revise all the beliefs and practices for Christianity and Islam that you need to know for the AQA GCSE Religious Studies A exam. You will build long-term memory and get plenty of exam practice.

AQA GCSE Religious Studies A: Christianity and Buddhism

Revise all the beliefs and practices from Christianity and Buddhism that you need to know for your AQA GCSE Religious Studies A exam. Revise, check and recall so that your Religious Studies revision sticks in your memory. 

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