Year 10 GCSE Advice

I'm in year 10 and lately, I've been feeling really demotivated about my GCSEs. I'm predicted a few 7s, mostly 8s and some 9s at the end of year 11 and I feel like I'm going to end up getting mediocre grades. I started my GCSEs (9-1 new grading scheme) in year 9 and I used to get 6s, 7s and 8s in tests, but now that I've started year 10, I'm getting 3s, 4s and 5s. I'm really bad at time management and can't really find the revision techniques that work for me and even though I try working hard, I never feel prepared before tests. I've got mocks coming up and I'm really stressed about the grades I'm going to get. I'm also doing my English lit and Latin exams at the end of year 10 and I really want to get 8s, but I sometimes feel like I'm not even going to pass them lol! I do have a really low self-esteem, in case you haven't noticed.Does anybody have any advice on what I should do?

What revision techniques have you tried? Personally, I find that writing notes in bullet point form really helps solidify your knowledge as it gets straight to the point. Others may encourage the use of a ton of colour but I’m the complete opposite, I do my titles in red, bullet points in blue, diagrams in pencil and equations in green so it is clear to me which is which. I did Latin too, I admit I spent absolutely ages on committing the translation to memory (I don’t know if you have to do this for your exam), I’d take half the page, write it down several times and test myself multiple times with just the Latin, it’s not a quick way to memorise the text but it worked in the long run. For the analysis, I’d take a technique from each line and remember those and mention those in the exam. For the language part of Latin, I did a ton of flash cards with the vocab on them. I also did quite a few practise sentences to consolidate my knowledge of the grammar. I too found Latin hard, I got low Bs in my mocks, that was enough for me to try harder to get the A* mark in the summer. I’m a musical person so I find that a good music playlist is enough to motivate me, perhaps the same will work for you? If you want more help, feel free to PM me, I’ll be happy to help!

Having got 10A*s and 2As at gcse I'd say start early! This is coming from someone who procrastinates a lot xD. But honestly start early and do as many past papers and revision early on so you are comfortable with the course content for your subjects. Looking at your predictions, I can clearly see you are bright and have a lot of potential so don't let it go to waste!

Thanks for the reply; I really appreciate it. Mind maps used to work for me in year 9, but I haven't really used them in a while. I find writing notes so time consuming, especially when it comes to revising for History. I don't know if there is a more effective way of taking notes or not. I find Latin quite easy, probably because my first language is quite similar to it, but I'm still stressed about it lol. Revision for me is literally reading as much as I can from a textbook on the night before the test 😭... I have absolutely no idea how that worked for me in year 9.