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GCSE - My Journey To Success (2019)

Hello and welcome to my Journey To Success thread!
I am currently moving to Year 9 (we're starting our GCSEs early :h:), meaning that I will be one of the first people to have a complete GCSE reform. :colondollar: This consequently means that all my exams that I'll be taking will be a lot more difficult - which of course is worrying :ashamed2:. That's why I have created this thread - to make sure I am successful when it comes to the new GCSEs! You may think I'm taking this a bit too seriously, and shouldn't even be thinking about studying till Year 11, but my plan is to take some subjects early in Year 10, consequently leaving me with less work for Year 11. The subjects I am taking and the grades I would like to achieve are:
Mathematics - Grade 9 / A** (going to try take in Year 10)

Further Maths - A* (not sure if the grading system is changing for this or not)

Biology - Grade 8 / A*

Chemistry - Grade 8 / A*

Physics - Grade 8 / A*

French - Grade 8 / A* (going to try take in Year 10)

English Language - Grade 7 / A

English Literature - Grade 7 / A

Computer Science - Grade 7 / A

Geography - Grade 7 / A (going to try take in Year 10)

Religious Studies - Grade 7 / A (going to try take in Year 10)

For A-Levels, right now, I think I'm going to take Biology, Chemistry, Physics and Mathematics. However, this may change.
Starting from Monday September 5th, I'll be updating EVERYDAY (hopefully), telling you guys what I've studied (or revised) that day - plus any test results I get.
Any advice, feel free to leave below. It will be very much appreciated. :h: And yes, this is going to be a three year thread! :colondollar:
:tsr:
(edited 7 years ago)

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Wow that's seriously impressive


Posted from TSR Mobile
I know you want to get ahead, but I'd really recommend not starting to revise too early, otherwise you'll lose motivation and burn out. You are still learning things for most of the year, so I'd focus on learning those and understanding them before you start revising. It's good to see that your ambitious, but I strongly suggest waiting, you're in year 9! You don't even take them for another year and a half! In case you don't trust me, I just got my results and got 11 A*'s. Trust me when I say that GCSE's should be the furthest thing from your mind right now.
Reply 3
Good luck! :smile:
Original post by jamesj477
I know you want to get ahead, but I'd really recommend not starting to revise too early, otherwise you'll lose motivation and burn out. You are still learning things for most of the year, so I'd focus on learning those and understanding them before you start revising. It's good to see that your ambitious, but I strongly suggest waiting, you're in year 9! You don't even take them for another year and a half! In case you don't trust me, I just got my results and got 11 A*'s. Trust me when I say that GCSE's should be the furthest thing from your mind right now.


Thanks for the response.

I'm not going to be revising for the most part, but studying. I don't go to a particularly good school so I thought it was worth my while to start studying now because I'll likely never learn the whole specification for all my subjects in lessons. :h::
Original post by JourneyToSuccess
Thanks for the response.

I'm not going to be revising for the most part, but studying. I don't go to a particularly good school so I thought it was worth my while to start studying now because I'll likely never learn the whole specification for all my subjects in lessons. :h::


fair enough, good luck
In! @Alisaurus Cats and @Fox Corner you might be interested in this :excited:
Original post by iEthan
In! @Alisaurus Cats and @Fox Corner you might be interested in this :excited:


Excellent spot!!

Hi @JourneyToSuccess


This is amazing and I'm definitely going to be checking in - as I'm sure will the rest of the CT.

We have lots of helpful advisors and current/former students on TSR so if you're ever struggling with something - studies, motivation etc then please reach out :h:

do this.jpg
Original post by JourneyToSuccess
Hello and welcome to my Journey To Success thread!
I am currently moving to Year 9 (we're starting our GCSEs early :h:), meaning that I will be one of the first people to have a complete GCSE reform. :colondollar: This consequently means that all my exams that I'll be taking will be a lot more difficult - which of course is worrying :ashamed2:. That's why I have created this thread - to make sure I am successful when it comes to the new GCSEs! You may think I'm taking this a bit too seriously, and shouldn't even be thinking about studying till Year 11, but my plan is to take some subjects early in Year 10, consequently leaving me with less work for Year 11. The subjects I am taking and the grades I would like to achieve are:
Mathematics - Grade 9 / A** (going to try take in Year 10)

Further Maths - A* (not sure if the grading system is changing for this or not)

Biology - Grade 8 / A*

Chemistry - Grade 8 / A*

Physics - Grade 8 / A*

French - Grade 8 / A* (going to try take in Year 10)

English Language - Grade 7 / A

English Literature - Grade 7 / A

Computer Science - Grade 7 / A

Geography - Grade 7 / A (going to try take in Year 10)

Religious Studies - Grade 7 / A (going to try take in Year 10)

For A-Levels, right now, I think I'm going to take Biology, Chemistry, Physics and Mathematics. However, this may change.
Starting from Monday September 5th, I'll be updating EVERYDAY (hopefully), telling you guys what I've studied (or revised) that day - plus any test results I get.
Any advice, feel free to leave below. It will be very much appreciated. :h: And yes, this is going to be a three year thread! :colondollar:
:tsr:


This is going to be really fascinating journey, thanks for starting it!
serious props to you for starting so early, i did nothing much until a few months before the actual exams
some advice would be to keep any revision material you make - i had loads of flashcards saved from mocks that helped a lot when exam season came around
good luck, i'll be sure to check on this :biggrin:
Original post by JourneyToSuccess
Hello and welcome to my Journey To Success thread!
I am currently moving to Year 9 (we're starting our GCSEs early :h:), meaning that I will be one of the first people to have a complete GCSE reform. :colondollar: This consequently means that all my exams that I'll be taking will be a lot more difficult - which of course is worrying :ashamed2:. That's why I have created this thread - to make sure I am successful when it comes to the new GCSEs! You may think I'm taking this a bit too seriously, and shouldn't even be thinking about studying till Year 11, but my plan is to take some subjects early in Year 10, consequently leaving me with less work for Year 11. The subjects I am taking and the grades I would like to achieve are:
Mathematics - Grade 9 / A** (going to try take in Year 10)

Further Maths - A* (not sure if the grading system is changing for this or not)

Biology - Grade 8 / A*

Chemistry - Grade 8 / A*

Physics - Grade 8 / A*

French - Grade 8 / A* (going to try take in Year 10)

English Language - Grade 7 / A

English Literature - Grade 7 / A

Computer Science - Grade 7 / A

Geography - Grade 7 / A (going to try take in Year 10)

Religious Studies - Grade 7 / A (going to try take in Year 10)

For A-Levels, right now, I think I'm going to take Biology, Chemistry, Physics and Mathematics. However, this may change.
Starting from Monday September 5th, I'll be updating EVERYDAY (hopefully), telling you guys what I've studied (or revised) that day - plus any test results I get.
Any advice, feel free to leave below. It will be very much appreciated. :h: And yes, this is going to be a three year thread! :colondollar:
:tsr:


Wait, you're already decided on A-levels? Quite early :P

Wish I paid attention as early as you, I had to play catch-up for Core Science in my own time, because our school started it in Year 9.

It's great that you're starting early! Just make sure not to eat through past papers, or diminish your motivation in the process.

Good luck! :biggrin:
Do you know what exam board you wre doing for maths,english,science and religious studies?
Reply 12
Looks worthy of a watch and good luck.
Day #1
Turns out that I don't go back to school till Tuesday! Anyways, I recently made a giant Google Spreadsheet for all my GCSEs so I can keep track on what things I am confident on and what things I am not so confident on.

GCSE Spreadsheet.PNG

Unfortunately none of my CGP study books have come yet, so I can only do Mathematics (CGP's MathsBuster), and French (Quizlet) until they arrive. I worked out that I have around 600 topics to complete, so I will be covering 6 or more a day. Each topic could take anywhere between 5 and 60 minutes depending on the subject/topic. I won't be doing anything today, yet I'll definitely be starting tomorrow and I'll update you guys how my first day back went and what I have studied!

~ JourneyToSuccess
Day#2 - Part 1/2
Looks like I have Science EVERYDAY! I can't believe it! I am so excited for the upcoming years as I thoroughly enjoy Science. Instead of just "Science" lessons (like in KS3), we now have been separated into Biology, Chemistry and Physics, which is very good. All my teachers so far seem great, but there are still many I haven't met yet (hopefully they are nice!). We had Biology today and obviously we started off with eukaryotic and prokaryotic cells, which was pretty straight forward in my opinion. Also, I finally got a decent phone, which is great because I can download apps such as Quizlet, Memrise and more. In conclusion, I would say my first day at school went pretty damn well if I do say so myself. The only problem is I'm not very happy with the people in sit next to in some classes, but I can learn to deal with them. I shall be updating you later this afternoon, explaining what I have achieved today (after school). :smile:

Edit: I have to do swimming in core PE. Kill me now. :frown: aha :giggle:

~ JourneyToSuccess
(edited 7 years ago)
Day#2 - Part 2/2
Today I went over eukaryotes and prokaryotes again using flashcards I made on Quizlet. I also made flashcards for writing about characters in English Literature and I studied them as well (this is because I did this in English today). Tomorrow I have Chemistry, French, English, Physics and Computer Science, and to prepare for those I made some printed documents covering the topics that will most likely come up and studied them. For Chemistry I did atoms, elements and compounds, for French I just did some comparison words out of the general vocabulary, for English I did writing about characters (like I said), for Physics I did energy stores and systems and for Computer Science I did representing algorithms. :h:

P.S. It's immensely satisfying when I can tick something off on my Google Spreadsheet. :lol:

~ JourneyToSuccess
Day#3
I didn't really get round to doing much today as when I came back I was extremely tired, so I slept till dinner time. :s-smilie: I've decided to wait until I actually receive my study guides (not till next week now :frown:) to start studying. However, I can still study Maths, French and English Lit + Lang. I'm finding it really hard to motivate myself to study English because it doesn't interest me in the slightest. Till next week, I'm probably going to complete all my Maths topics on MathsBuster and do as many Duolingo topics as possible to consolidate and improve my French knowledge. Well, now on today, I just did a few Maths topics and that's it. I feel quite unmotivated today for some reason, don't know why. Hopefully feel better tomorrow. :h:

~ JourneyToSuccess
Day#4 and 5
You guys may or not be wondering where I have been for the past few days. Well, for the past few days I've been creating my own AQA GCSE 9-1 French course on Memrise! I have made one course for General Vocabulary, and one course for Theme-based Vocabulary. Here are the links:

General Vocabulary: http://www.memrise.com/course/1199148/aqa-9-1-gcse-french-general-vocabulary/

Theme-based Vocabulary: http://www.memrise.com/course/1199399/aqa-9-1-gcse-french-theme-based-vocabulary/

If you are doing that course be sure to check it out because I spent a lot of time copying out the specification to make this! :biggrin: Sorry about not updating you guys for a while, I was just spending pretty much all my time creating this for my personal use and anyone else's use. I plan to complete the General Vocabulary course by next week. I shall update you on how I've managed. :h:

~ JourneyToSuccess
(edited 7 years ago)
Day#6

I think I have achieved a lot today. I learn all the General Vocabulary part of the AQA 9-1 GCSE French specification (411 words)! Tomorrow my goal is to complete all the Theme-based Vocabulary and hopefully review it enough times to be able to remember them.
aqa gcse french.PNG~ JourneyToSuccess
Day#6
Turns out my goal was completely unrealistic but you know, that's just what I do - set unrealistic goals. :lol: Anyways, I managed to do 100 words of vocab out of the 900 and something I was supposed to do, however I spent most of my day reviewing my general vocabulary so it was really stuck in my head. My plan for this week is:
Mon - Theme 1
Tues - Theme 2
Wed - Theme 3
Thurs - Review
Fri - Grammar
Sat - Grammar
Sun - Grammar
And yes, that's all for French. I know, pretty damn exciting, but I love French so it doesn't bother me too much. Oh, and got some good news, most my books should be coming by Thursday which is good. Hopefully I can take a picture of most my books so I can recommend you guys on which books to buy (that's if they're good)! The rest of my books I can't order till my birthday (September 17). Tomorrow I'm also planning on nipping to le centre-ville to get a fountain pen. I've always wanted one so I thought I might as well try on out and see if I like them. My style of handwriting shound suite them as well. Don't worry, I'm not buying some ridiculous priced one, just one that I could use for "testing" I suppose you could say. I also have DOUBLE Religious Studies tomorrow :s-smilie:! I kinda enjoy learning about Islam so it's not that bad.

~ JourneyToSuccess
(edited 7 years ago)

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