GCSE Computer Science Flash Cards
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Why Flash Cards Are Useful for GCSE Computer Science Students
Most definitely a revision classic, flashcards are a fantastic way to spice up revision time with fun activities and ensure that you’ve done a thorough job at covering all of the key definitions and concepts in time for your students’ GCSE Computer Science exams!
As per Howard Gardner’s multiple intelligence theory, you’ll remember that in each class there are many different types of learners. As per Gardner’s research then it is only fair and logical that you aim to appeal to all of the different types of learners – be it visual, musical, linguistic, or kinetic! Flashcards are, in particular, a great tool for both linguistic and kinetic learners. This is because flashcards can display the relevant information in a visually exciting way, but at the same time also involve active learning (like going through a deck and flipping the other side each time to check the correct answer).
The good news for all teachers is also that you can use flashcards at every stage of the class – both when introducing, practicing and recycling new terms. As GCSE Computer Science has a whole array of niche terms that students will have to learn for their exams, flashcards will go a long way in ensuring that your revision sessions are successful.
Moreover, not only are the flashcards themselves great, but you can get students engaged by having them create their own flashcards in class to then take home. Students can and should use flashcards on their own, with a teacher and even a study buddy. This can be particularly practical because one deck of flashcards can be useful for both of the study buddies involved as they can test each other and spend extra time learning the key terms and concepts.
As an interactive revision tool, flashcards give you the opportunity to gamify learning. Studies have proven that gamification of revision and learning go a long way in improving information retention in children and young adults. This is because the learners then do not associate the revision activity with a ‘chore’ or boredom, but instead with games and leisure time. Therefore they’re doing plenty of hard work for their GCSE Computer Science exams without even realising it.
In fact, flashcards have been known to be particularly useful for learning a language as they aid repetition, mnemonic learning, and prompt one’s memory in random order. Luckily for your students, what is computer science and coding if not a mathematical language? Employing flashcards in revision will also encourage your students to see it the same way and give them a fresh perspective on their GCSE Computer Science syllabus.
You may be asking, why is prompting one’s memory in random order a good revision technique? As research shows, prompting memory in a random order works directly building neural connections in our brains between the meaning of a word, its phonetic value and how it is spelled.
The repetition that flashcards encourage is also a key element of any revision method. It is unlikely that any student will manage to retain information from any note on the first go. In fact, the way the human brain works means that it tries to forget whatever it deems to be unnecessary as soon as possible after learning it in order to make way for other new pieces of information. Therefore, repetition is essential to convincing our brains that this particular piece of information has to be retained and not filtered out. With flashcards, students can engage in repetition exercises from the very beginning of the revision season up until the last day before exams. A compact easy to carry tool, flashcards can be taken home, on the school bus or even outside for active revision.
The reason that flashcards help with mnemonic memorizing is that they link a visual representation to a meaning. Our brains are likely to remember not only the word but even a minor scratch or fold of a flashcard that we will then associate with that word. To take revising with flashcards to another level, you are encouraged to introduce flashcards in different colours – each colour can then be attributed to a particular concept or topic which will challenge your students’ brains to memorise yet another layer of information.
Most importantly, flashcards are the key revision tool to improve active recall. This is something young learners often find particularly difficult as they may learn new information but not be trained to recall it when prompted under pressure or in a test. Thus, using flashcards teaches learners to respond to prompts and jog their memory to recall the information they’ve learned at an earlier stage.
Writing up flashcard decks is possible but can also take a long time, especially if you need decks for all of your students and want to have several different decks of cards. In order to help you out, we’ve created several decks of flashcards with all the GCSE Computer Science topics covered! Take a look at our samples and secure the very best revision flashcards for your class. Students can then go ahead and personalise their own decks to make them unique and aid individual learning.