-------------------------------------
Your instincts sound good to me except for the bombarding your teacher part!!!
I would add to your list that the review time is a good time to review certain concepts or procedures that weren't quite clear the first time because, oftentimes, it is the second time through that things start to make more sense and come together.
Also, a skill that students must have on a midyear or final that they don't really have to have on a unit test is to think about which area of focus the question is about (kinematics? forces? energy? etc.) so that can trigger the proper problem solving procedure in their mind.
An often overlooked thing is to look at is to allow equations to guide your thinking on conceptual questions. Oftentimes students will get these wrong because they are answering the questions conversationally ("oooh - 'b' sounds right") when they should be thinking constructively ("If v is constant, then net force must be zero so...")
Here are some of my notes from the book "How We Learn...." by Benedict Carey
-The Fluency Illusion ("But I studied so hard for that test and knew everything!"): If you do a lot of classic review: reread, highlight, quick recitation of basic facts in one big sitting, then you are likely to feel prepared when you are not. This kind of one-shot, passive review is not the best way to get stuff into your noggin. (although the cram session the night before does help in the short term with recall related items, it does not help with problem solving & understanding).
-Mix it up: Do not study in an extended, focused way in a quiet environment. Rather, break your study sessions into shorter sessions extended over several days and do them in different environments with different types of distractors. The more different types of contexts and the more times you've had to retrieve and use a memory, the easier it is to access later.
-Sleep is important: Early, deep sleep stages seem to be most helpful in laying down fact-related memory. Late stage sleep stages seem most useful in creativity, impasse-breaking issues.
-Interleaving material and pretesting seem to be most efficient at getting the memories being laid down to be easily retrievable (the best way to increase recall is to retrieve the memory many times). Even physically skilled practice should be broken up so you are not just concentrating on one one skill at a time. Interestingly, focused practice or study feels most effective and gives greater apparent short term gain, but performance testing shows that interleaving works better (Interleaving is more like the real thing the author suggests). Likewise, taking tests (even without any background knowledge) and getting immediate feedback is the quickest, surest route to learn new facts.
-Start early and take many breaks. The brain continues to work on stuff off-line and ideas/connections percolate up from your subconscious during the off times.
-Mix it up: Do not study in an extended, focused way in a quiet environment. Rather, break your study sessions into shorter sessions extended over several days and do them in different environments with different types of distractors. The more different types of contexts and the more times you've had to retrieve and use a memory, the easier it is to access later.
-Sleep is important: Early, deep sleep stages seem to be most helpful in laying down fact-related memory. Late stage sleep stages seem most useful in creativity, impasse-breaking issues.
-Interleaving material and pretesting seem to be most efficient at getting the memories being laid down to be easily retrievable (the best way to increase recall is to retrieve the memory many times). Even physically skilled practice should be broken up so you are not just concentrating on one one skill at a time. Interestingly, focused practice or study feels most effective and gives greater apparent short term gain, but performance testing shows that interleaving works better (Interleaving is more like the real thing the author suggests). Likewise, taking tests (even without any background knowledge) and getting immediate feedback is the quickest, surest route to learn new facts.
-Start early and take many breaks. The brain continues to work on stuff off-line and ideas/connections percolate up from your subconscious during the off times.
-Rideout
P.S. They are not "poor students who are going through the excruciating pain" but rather lucky individuals who have been granted an opportunity to assimilate the best tools for thinking yet invented by mankind (AKA Physics) into their own world-view gestalt and then to practice these skills in a reinforcing way. Once they cease to be students (in the larger sense of the word) that's when their real existential pain will begin! Cumulative exams ground us and give us intellectual purpose like few other activities in life.
