Is Review Week Helpful?

Starting on Tuesday, this week was review week. Review week entails that there should be no new material, no summatives, and little to no assigned homework within our classes. This allows the students to take the time both inside and outside of class to study for the final exams. So, most classes are not structured and the teacher has no lesson plan. The students are free to study anything that they have learned in the class this semester. However, since the classes entail just sitting there and studying, are they really helpful?

Each student has a different form of studying and there are many different ways of reviewing for each exam. I interviewed both Prerna K. and Rusha S. and they both agreed that review week is not helpful to them. When I spoke to Prerna K., she said that “in certain classes, it’s useful because the teacher gives you review sheets, but in some classes, it’s just sitting and reviewing and you do not need to be at school for that.” In general, there are two different types of classes: those that go over the material with the teacher, or those that just allow you to do what you would like. Prerna believes that when the teachers give a more structured set up with review sheets and questions, it’s an advantage to our studying process. However, I interviewed Rusha S. who said that “teachers attempt to implement methods which they think will help the students, but it doesn’t help everyone because people have different ways of reviewing.”

Since the students I interviewed do not think that review week is necessarily helpful, how can we fix the way review week is set up? Rusha S. said that “[her] old school used to get a week holiday right before exams.” This idea of having a week holiday could potentially help us since we should already know how we study best. However, this could potentially make the students less productive as they would see it as a “holiday”, not a week for studying. In my opinion, the review week works well enough for everyone, even if some do not find it helpful and there is no need to change its structure.