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Mia's GYG-GCSE edition

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Omg you actually sound like you have your life together I'm so jealous. Looking forward to following your journey to those 8s and 9s! :biggrin:

Reply 21

Mikos

Original post by troubletracking

Omg you actually sound like you have your life together I'm so jealous. Looking forward to following your journey to those 8s and 9s! :biggrin:

Omg thank you so much! That means a lot. And trust me, despite what you may think, my life is far from together ahah, but I'm really happy to hear that it appears that way :biggrin:

Reply 22

Mikos

DAY 5: 03/10/17
First and foremost, I'm happy to say that I'm more or less back to normal revision wise. Now, let's get onto the actual details...
What I did today:
Today, I did my 2 hours of biology. I covered most of the homeostasis topic, which I'm happy to know I've gotten out of the way, as I didn't really understand it when we went through it during class. This is due to the fact that my biology class kind of resembles a zoo, so due to being behind on account of constant disruption, we sort of had to rush through the content. Anyway, I said then that I'd cover it later, so it's comforting to know that I at least understand the content, now.

As for maths, I again got roughly an hour done. If you've been following this thread, you may remember that I mentioned that a large part of maths being my weakest subject is due to my poor standard of arithmetic. Well, today, I worked on that a bit. My primary school was pretty bad, so I never learned long operations (i.e multiplication, subtraction, addition etc.) properly. This means that I am now teaching it to myself in year 11. However, it's been worth my time. The last thing I want is to lose what are meant to be easy marks on the non-calculator paper and consequently missing a grade.
I think that it's important to realise that being a grade 8/9 student doesn't mean learning the grade 8/9 content. It means knowing everything, including the grade 8/9 content as much as the real basics, because your grade is based on your whole knowledge of a subject, not just the final few questions on your exam. So, for today, I've decided to "bring it back to basics" to avoid losing easy marks on my exam, and to fix the mistakes of my primary school.

I also caught up on my daily 5 minutes of German :biggrin:

What I used:
For German, I just used good old Memrise for some light revision.

For maths, I used a site called "mathinery", a new one for me. It has some KS2 content worksheets (since today I was focusing on solidifying my basic knowledge), and it's pretty good so far. I also used Mathisfun to explain some concepts I was unfamiliar with.

For biology, I simply used my trusty CGP revision textbook, and did some notetaking with that. These things are excellent imo, I love the fact that they're concise and well-summarised, so the info (which is is large in quantity) is much easier to digest. :smile:

Until tomorrow, guys!
PS: I'm truly delighted to see some new people taking an interest in this thread. It's really motivating, so thank you so much to anyone reading this!

Reply 23

clouddbubbles

Original post by Mikos

DAY 5: 03/10/17 (PLAN)
Wow, it's been a while! Sorry for the lack of updates, I have been abroad, and haven't had time to revise as a result. However, I'm back, and ready to get right back into the swing of things!
Today's plan:
Once again, I plan to get some biology done today. I'm thinking 2 hours as today's biology target. Not too high, but not insufficient, either, which is the perfect balance for getting right back into the swing of things! I also wish to do an hour or so of maths, as this is, as aforementioned, my weak point. I will also do a relatively small amount of German (5-10 mins, possibly more depending on how I feel when it comes to it).

That's 3 hours in total. Again, I plan to increase this workload sometime soon, but for now, I'm more focused on getting re-familiarised with having a somewhat hefty workload to deal with. And, if I'm honest, 3 hours isn't bad for someone simply trying to readjust.

Update later!

i’m loving your gyg!
i hope you achieve your goals :smile:

you seem really motivated to achieve them!

what do you think of kerboodle? i like the resources available but i find it kinda hard to use the book online instead of in real life but i LOOOOVVVEEEEE memrise!

check out my gyg if you would like :smile:

Reply 24

Mikos

Original post by clouddbubbles

i’m loving your gyg!
i hope you achieve your goals :smile:

First of all, thank you so much! I really appreciate that.

I honestly really like Kerboodle. I think the textbooks available offer a lot of questions, more content etc. which sort of makes them a little better than CGP, although admittedly these textbooks should be more concise, as the "wall of text" nature of some of the content makes some of the information harder to digest, which is CGP's strongpoint imo.
Personally, I have no issue with reading the books off of a screen. In fact, I sometimes prefer it. With many CGP books you usually get an online edition, which I often find myself using rather than my physical copy. However, I see how some people would prefer to have the book in front of them.

As for Memrise, I totally agree. I can really see the difference in my German ability since I've started using it, and I like the fact that the vocabulary is specific to your GCSE course. It's more helpful than its competitors (i.e Duolingo) in that respect.

Once I get back from maths tutoring, I'll definitely take a peek at your GYG :biggrin:

thanks again!

Reply 25

Anonymous work

Original post by Mikos

No problem!
I've personally never heard of a "scrubber" school, would you mind explaining what that entails to me? :smile:

I personally just go to a pretty typical state school haha.
Psychology sounds really interesting! I'm actually considering taking it at A-Level, although admittedly I'm currently not sure. I heard it's largely statistic based, although that's just hearsay.

Hey mia,
sorry for late reply, had internet problems. so yeah about scrubber school lol, im from a school kind of near wickersley area, which is the posh school, and people round my area think that my school is full of thick weirdo's which is not the case because i know a lot of people who are pretty clever. and also, my big bro went there, and he is a doctor so not all of us are thick, i think. also, mia i'd love to hear more about your state school :smile:

. you also mentioned psychology, and that along with math and physics is my favourite subject. honestly mia, this is just my opinion, but i think you should do it - its awesome. honestly if u like learning about the human mind and behaviour, its for u deffo. thanks once again, mate

Reply 26

Mikos

Original post by Anonymous work

No problem!

As for my state school, honestly, for the standards of our city (which are EXTREMELY poor), we do pretty well. We're actually the best state school in our small city (although we're outperformed by a lot of schools in the county).

However, a lot of my classes are mixed ability, so what ends up happening is that hard working students have to deal with the nonsense of students who aren't willing to put any effort in. To put it into perspective, a big trend at my school right now is to get chunks of glue from the school's gluesticks and chucking them at the ceiling to make them stick. A lot of people also find humour in making stupid noises to distract others.

Because of the zoo-like nature of some of these classrooms, we end up behind due to disruption, which results in teachers rushing through the content in order to get back to where they should be, and people don't properly understand the content as a consequence of this. That's probably the main pitfall of my school.

Aside from this, our school is pretty good. There's a lot of opportunities and the standard of teaching is good, even if we're sometimes let down by a few morons.

As for psychology, yeah, a lot of people say it's quite interesting! I'm also quite drawn to it as an "essay based" subject, as I've heard, as that makes it a good subject to prepare you for a course in law, which is what I plan to ultimately go on and study. It's also apparently a little less academically taxing than the other subjects I want to do at A-Level, which are English lit, history and biology, so hopefully if I do go on to take it, I'll have a nice balance of subjects which are suited for what I want to pursue :smile:

Reply 27

Anonymous work

Original post by Mikos

hey, sounds like there are quite a lot of disruptions in your class. my school is good in the sense that they have like top sets and stuff. yh, psychologyi s great, really interesting, so do it if your interested,
thanks :smile:

Reply 28

Mikos

DAY 6: 04/10/17
I didn't have any targets in mind on this day, so I just did what I felt like. It was somewhat of a "rest day", if you like.
What I did today:
On this day, I did 1.5 hours of maths and 1.5 hours of biology. That's 3 hours total, which isn't bad, but I would have liked to have done more, admittedly.

As always, I did a bit of German!
What I used:
For German, I just did my daily Memrise.
For maths, I had a session with my maths tutor today (who's brilliant), and we did some work on simultaneous equations with a quadratic, and how to solve them both algebraically and graphically. We also did some work on how to solve simultaneous equations with a circle graph. All of these were easy enough imo, although provided a healthy enough challenge to keep your brain engaged. In addition to this, we did some recap work on topics such as surds.
As for biology, I went back to my good old CGP revision guide.

Overall, day 6 was an okay day's worth of revision. I kind of wish I made progress today, but it's better than nothing, I suppose.

Reply 29

Mikos

DAY 7: 05/10/17
I realised I had a unit test the following day
What I did today:
On this day, I did 2.5 hours of physics. It was enough to get through all the content I needed to, and I did well on the unit test, however, I still wish I did more. For me, 2.5 hours is a bit disappointing. I know, it's better than nothing, but I am aiming to increase my workload during weekends especially.

Aside from that, I did my daily memrise practice.
What I used:
For German, I used Memrise (as I do), and for physics I used my CGP textbook.

Reply 30

Mikos

DAY 8: 07/10/17
On the 6th of this month, I decided to take a day off. This was because due to jet lag throwing off my sleep, in addition to homework and more, I decided that I really needed it, as the fact that I was both busy AND deprived of sleep was really preventing me from working at my optimum, and I feel like if you're going to revise, you need to do it properly.
What I did today:
On this day, I did 1.5 hours of maths. I know, it's not a lot, but I find it really difficult to revise on school days as I'm simply not used to it. It's an okay amount having considered that it's my first time properly revising on a school night without having a test the next day, and it's an amount that I hope to increase as the days go by.
I practiced surds for maths, just so I could reassure my confidence on the topic, as I felt as though I'd forgotten some of the content.
As per usual, I did a bit of Memrise to practice over German.
What I used:
For German, I used Memrise (what else? :biggrin:

). For maths, I used mathsgenie and worksheetmath, a website which generates a set of questions (and answers) for a maths topic of your choice. Although new to me, it does seem like a good way to practice maths more casually, so I will definitely be revisiting this website in the near future, and would recommend it based on my experience of it so far.

Reply 31

Pink fizz

This looks really good and you seem to be doing well 😊 Don't worry about only doing 1.5 hours of maths after school because as the year goes on you'll find you'll be able to work longer. Also be careful not to burn yourself out

Reply 32

Mikos

Original post by Ginger_

Thank you very much, I appreciate that :smile:

Yeah, I agree, working after school can be difficult to get used to, so atm I'm not too concerned about only getting 1.5 hours, but I'm definitely hoping to increase it.
Thank you for the reassurance :biggrin:

Reply 33

Pink fizz

Original post by Mikos

Thank you very much, I appreciate that :smile:

No problem 😊 And good luck!😁

Reply 34

Mikos

Original post by Ginger_

No problem 😊 And good luck!😁

Thank you, Ginger! I really appreciate it :smile:

Reply 35

username3460126

Your gyg is amazingggg! :biggrin:

Reply 36

Mikos

Original post by A.N123

Your gyg is amazingggg! :biggrin:

Thank you so much! I appreciate your kind words :biggrin:

Reply 37

Mikos

Hi guys! I've been taking a little break from TSR recently because I've been busy with homework, and sleeping in the day (which I finally think I've managed to wean myself off of as of today, lol). I've done bits of revision in between (not nearly enough, but I still thought it'd be worth documenting), so here's a post to combine those.
DAY 9: 08/10/17
What I did today:
Of course, for German I used memrise. I also did 40 minutes of history on top of that. I'm aware that that's not a lot, but as aforementioned, due to me sleeping a lot and having a rather unreasonable amount of homework, it's a matter of it being better than nothing.
What I used:
For German, I used Memrise, and for history I just used some notes from my book. I really need to start getting my work up for history, as it's my first mock (which I'll comment on further on after I post this)

DAY 10: 09/10/17
What I did today:
Today I did an hour's worth of physics, on top of German. For physics, I covered some work on the earlier topics (mainly energy), because I haven't done them in a while. My memory of the topic seems to be good, so I'm happy about that! :biggrin:

What I used:
Of course I kept the Memrise streak going, and for physics I used the physics Kerboodle textbooks. I still think the OUP (Kerboodle) textbooks need to be condensed more, but honestly they're good books.
DAY 11: 09/10/17
What I did today:
Today, I did an hour of biology, using both my CGP textbook as well as Kerboodle. I also did German, although a bit more than usual (20 minutes or so). Overall, that's an hour and 20 minutes, so it seems that I've made progress of an extra 20 minutes per day this school week. I was really disappointed with the initial 40 minutes this week so I'm thankful to know that I've at least made advances since then.

Reply 38

Mikos

A COMMENT IN REGARD TO MOCK EXAMS:
My first mock exam will be at the very end of this month (30 Nov), that exam being history. Later today I will (hopefully) remember to show you guys my exam timetable, just to give you an idea of what I have to do over this month. Needless to say, it's going to be a busy period for me.

What I need to focus on:

•

Exam technique:

First and foremost, I need to improve my exam technique. For subjects such as English and history (which I intend to take at A-Level), exam technique is so crucial. It's one thing being able to use flowery language, having excellent ideas and knowing all the content, but how are you meant to get it all down properly if you're unfamiliar with the exam technique? The impact it has on your grade is almost immeasurable, and you'll often find that extremely talented students see their grades drop due to poor exam technique. Therefore, it's an important thing to work on.

Exam technique is a personal weak point as it stands, hence why I'm currently striving to improve it.

Also, my school's history department have made the (in my opinion) wise choice to tell us what topics we should revise for our mocks. Why have they done this? It's simply because they want us to focus on our exam technique. I'm grateful that this decision has been made, as it addresses my problem head on.

•

Learning the content:

All of the subjects I've taken are academia rather than skill based. This, in addition to the new 9-1 course being more content heavy to begin with, means that I have a LOT to learn. This is probably one of my bigger priorities at the moment. You'll notice that I revise biology a lot, and that's because due to its extremely high volume of content, I've decided it'd be best to, if you like, "get it out of the way". There's no way you can revise a content heavy subject at the last minute and expect to do well, so I'm getting them done now. I've dabbled in the other subjects, although I've gotten the more content based ones out of the way first (I'm nearly done with biology, for example).

•

Practise:

I spoke earlier about exam technique, which sort of falls under this. Knowing the content is one thing, but you're going to need to learn how use that EFFICIENTLY. It'll save time in exams, and doing a lot of questions on something will help you to reveal your weaknesses so that you can address them and prevent yourself from making them in the future. Practising also means that doing the questions will come more naturally, so you won't waste time or even confuse yourself (which can cost you marks) by taking the time to recall. Moral of the story? Practise, practise, practise! :P

In conclusion:
So, that's my first "mock season" update! Tell me, what do you guys think of this format that I'm using for posts relating to how I'm trying to tackle my problems? I'm thinking of posting posts just like this one, alongside my updates of course, to serve as a more in-depth explanation on as to what I'm struggling with and how I'm overcoming them. :biggrin:

Once again, I want to thank each and every one of you who have been following my journey so far. I like to think of myself as someone who is quite eloquent, however, I am finding it extremely difficult to articulate my gratitude. You guys are my motivators, and your engagement has been helping me immensely. I seriously can't thank you guys enough for that. Your kind comments make my day, seriously.

P.S: sorry for the little hiatus haha, hope I made up for it by filling you guys in with what happened in the meantime :P