Revising for OCR GCSE History B (Schools History Project)

This summer, Year 11 students face the challenge of new GCSE history specifications that are assessed entirely through terminal exams. Successful revision strategies will be crucial if your students are to do well in their GCSE exams. So what are the important things to remember as you help them to prepare for the three papers for the GCSE History B (SHP)?

I believe that it is essential that all your students have well-structured and detailed notes for each part of the course. You could achieve this by:

• Photocopying examples of effective notes from high-achieving students in your class, by preparing your own summaries or by using those in my revision notes for History B produced by Hodder Education (details below).
• Including ‘condensing and transforming’ strategies that will enable students to memorise knowledge.
• Asking students to summarise and reorganise their notes into timelines, grids, charts, mind-maps, bullet-point lists, annotated maps, cartoon drawings, summary cards and podcasts.
• Helping knowledge to stick. One student might prefer to capture the whole of the thematic study on a length of wall paper; for another, a series of small cards for each period might work best.

Use a range of strategies to make revision engaging and fun. For instance:

• Whole-class quizzes; team challenges (e.g challenge groups, from memory, to produce sugar-paper summaries for different topics).
• Kinaesthetic activities (e.g. ask each student to become an event or development and to line up in chronological order, then get them to argue about their significance).
• Give students practice in answering different question-types in the time they will have in the exam. An important principle of the OCR History B specification is that students will be rewarded for any relevant knowledge they deploy in response to questions.

Guide them in the expectations of each question-type. For example:

• Paper 1. Questions 4/5
  The judgement question (worth 18 marks) is the most challenging question on the paper. Students will need detailed knowledge to support their judgement and this should be organised into paragraphs. Students could finish with a conclusion summarizing the reasons for their judgement or with their strongest reason.
• Paper 2. Questions 1/2/3
  Students will have 30 minutes to answer each of two questions about their chosen site. They should use their knowledge of the site to answer the question directly. It’s important to give clear descriptions of the physical features of the site. Revision notes that include plans, photos and descriptions of the whole site and of the different feature of the site will really help students to do well in Paper 2.
• Paper 3. Question 7
  This question asks students how useful a collection of sources/interpretations are for a particular line of enquiry. I recommend spending 20 minutes on this question, evaluating each source or interpretation in relation to the question and then giving an overall view about how strong they are as evidence taken together.

I highly recommend the below resources which you and your students can refer to as you prepare for these exams.

• The OCR B (SHP) Assessment Guide, produced by SHP
• The OCR B (SHP) my revision notes, published by Hodder Education
• Richard Kennett’s resources for revising The People’s Health

The SHP e-news will alert you to other revision resources in the lead up to the summer exams so make sure you’ve visited our website and signed up to our mailing list.

About the author

Michael Riley - Director at Schools History Project (SHP)

Michael has been Director at SHP since 2008. He is responsible for the strategic direction of SHP, ensuring that the project provides an independent source of ideas and experience for the teaching of history in schools. He also organises the annual conference and regional courses, maintains the website and represents SHP at external meetings. Michael is involved in the development of SHP-Hodder publications.