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I got all 9s in GCSE-here's how

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Reply 40
Original post by kkai
i still need to make my revision notes, is it too late to aim for 9s,,, would finishing my notes by mid march give me sufficient time to revise?

I'm in year 11as well, and at this point, I'd suggest just doing brief notes, like flashcards or mindmaps because writing out notes will take you a while, it took me 5 weeks and that was with me writing out notes for entire topics in the textbook every night , worst 5 weeks of my life tbh:s-smilie:
Reply 41
Original post by chanxox
I'm in year 11as well, and at this point, I'd suggest just doing brief notes, like flashcards or mindmaps because writing out notes will take you a while, it took me 5 weeks and that was with me writing out notes for entire topics in the textbook every night , worst 5 weeks of my life tbh:s-smilie:


I'm planning to work around 6 hours a day from now on. I have done my flashcards for biology, brief notes for C1, a history theme and like half of the poems. Brief notes aren't really my thing so I'm gonna work hard, memorize as I go along and make notes too. Wish me luck! hopefully everything will be done by first or second week in March.
Reply 42
Best of luck to you ☺️
Reply 43
Sorry for so many questions but when did you start doing past papers?
Original post by alwinjm
Sorry for so many questions but when did you start doing past papers?

No worries!
This will be different for everyone, but I'd only really advise you to do a full past paper once you have covered all the content within it in class.
Once I completed an entire 'paper' worth of content in class, I would begin to do past papers- I was most definitely doing them by Easter, start as soon as possible if you haven't already!
Pizza Pancakes How many hours during a school day did you revise at this time of year?
(edited 5 years ago)
I do 3 hrs on a school day! But it will gradually build up to 4hrs soon
Reply 47
Original post by pizzapancakes26
No worries!
This will be different for everyone, but I'd only really advise you to do a full past paper once you have covered all the content within it in class.
Once I completed an entire 'paper' worth of content in class, I would begin to do past papers- I was most definitely doing them by Easter, start as soon as possible if you haven't already!

Thank you so much i really appreciate your help!
Original post by aarongrewal
Pizza Pancakes How many hours during a school day did you revise at this time of year?

Hello!
In Year 11 at this time, I was completing my homework, and around 3-4 hours or so each night. I would come home around 15:30, eat and chill for a bit then start revising from 4:30 or so. With breaks, this took me to around 8pm. From then on, just relaxing. This meant I had slightly less to do over the weekend, but this doesn't mean I didn't revise over the weekend at all- I would put in as much time as I felt like doing, no point sitting there revising if you're not motivated enough to do it well.

Good luck!
Original post by halsx11
I do 3 hrs on a school day! But it will gradually build up to 4hrs soon

I used to do around 3-4 hours a day so this sounds good! Remember, its not about how long you study for, but how productive that study is :smile:
Original post by pizzapancakes26
To start off, by no means do I want this to be a bragging post or acclamation of how 'smart' I am, I have received several PMs and have decided to make a post about how I actually did it- how I got a clean sweep of 9s in GCSE.
You may not believe me and that is fair enough, but hopefully you'll at least acknowledge some of the stuff I advise anyway.

Background: I did the following at GCSE-
English literature (AQA), English language(AQA), Maths(Edexcel) Religious Studies (Eduqas), French (AQA) History (Edexcel) Triple science (AQA) and Polish (AQA). I'm currently in Year 12 doing 3 A Levels: Chemistry, Biology and English Literature.
I want to study medicine or something healthcare/science related in the future so if you have any questions about that, do PM me.

The main piece of advice I would give is start early. Whilst for Year 11s the time is nearing at a scarily fast pace, Year 10s, I would urge you to start at least some sort of proper revision around Christmas time when you get to Year 11, of course revising throughout Year 10 as well.
Year 11- you should be consistently and regularly revising at this point. January is basically over and February half term will come around in no time where you really should place a lot of focus on getting some good quality studying done. During the exams and in between them, I did very minimal revision, as I had covered all my content and revision earlier in the year.

What I did: I revised throughout the school year each night- not hardcore by any means, but doing something-a set of practice questions, mindmaps, flashcards, and in this way I gradually built up a bank of good resources. I started revising more solidly at Christmas time and by Easter, I was putting in a lot of hours- Easter is really, your final chance to really give it that big push.

Techniques: First, find out what kind of learner you are. I am a visual learner, hence my techniques make sense: I made loads of flash cards. Loads. They worked particularly well for science because they ensured I knew all the content. I have attached the link to my quizlet cards: https://quizlet.com/FrenchFries26 Just go on the GCSE folders and I have plenty of flashcards with key info, model answers, etc.
Practice questions and papers. Our year group was the first to do all the new GCSEs so past papers were becoming less useful but here's the thing- examiners can't really come up with new questions, so they reuse and recycle old ones- therefore the more you practice questions, the more familiar you will be. I used physics and maths tutor: https://www.physicsandmathstutor.com/ and still swear by it for A Level.

Maths is similar to the sciences: you can't really revise it, you have to practice it.
Essay subjects: You need to plan essays. For English, plan essays for each of the themes and characters, and then write the essays in timed conditions, hand them in to your teacher to mark, and repeat. Act upon the feedback they give you, because it is vital. Once you plan as many essays as you can, you will virtually be fully prepared. The essay which came up for me in the Shakespeare section was one I planned a while back, so all I did was I rewrote the essay from as much memory as I could, obviously changing up some parts which my teacher earlier marked a 9.
For history, you will need to know content extremely well, however most of your marks are based not on evidence, but on explanations, and so making sure you use convincing language and are not just describing will ensure you let the examiner you know what you're talking about. Practice questions.

Languages: I have a natural knack for languages, so French did not prove to be too much of a challenge for me- I saw a word, I remembered it. However what I did do, was I spent a lot of break times with my teacher practising for the spoken exam to ensure pronunciation was on point, and I consistently learned vocab, writing pieces using the words I had revised.

Exam technique is important. You need to play the examiner's game. Once you've seen all the evolution and series circuit questions there are, and planned all the essays, there is nothing that can surprise you- and you will do well.

Plan: I personally prefer todo lists rather than timetables for revision because I don't like a strict time scale, but if timetables motivate you more, use them to plan your study.

Your health, however, is also very important. Do not neglect your wellbeing for your grades, because both end up going downhill if you do.

If you have any more questions, PM me and I'll be happy to answer.

Good luck!

First off, congratulations! That’s an incredible achievement that will help keep so many doors open for you. In the future you will be so grateful to past you for putting aside a little bit of time each day to revise, working hard for a year and a bit and now having those grades for life.
Also ignore the losers who are trying to make you feel bad about achieving.
1. It’s not their life. You aren’t harming anyone so they have no reason to put you down.
2. They probably don’t realise that the medicines which keep them alive, the cars and planes that make the world accessible to them, the TVs, satellites, the internet, everything that makes their life so comfortable and exciting was designed by people who have a strong work ethic like you. I’m not saying you can’t go far in life if you have bad GCSEs - you really can! But the very thing they mock is something they value more than they realise.
3. GCSEs are important. When I went to uni they judged your academic performance potential primarily on your AS level grades. Now you don’t have those they will have to look to your GCSE grades and your predicted grades. Doing so well on your GCSEs will open so many doors for you and make getting into uni so much easier
4. You have done yourself such a favour by learning how to revise. You have probably learnt what works for you, what doesn’t, how long some things (like making good notes) really take, how effective revising can actually be, etc. All of this will put you in a good place for revising for your A levels and help give you the motivation to keep doing it. Plus having a firm basis in each subject to build off of will help you as well.

Well done and best of luck to you!
(edited 5 years ago)
Thanks for making this thread!

Are there any Quizlet sets you would recommend for French GCSE? Quizlet seems like the best way to learn all the specification vocab, but there are so many sets and some of them are so humongous (thousands of terms) that I just don't know where to start.
Original post by pizzapancakes26
To start off, by no means do I want this to be a bragging post or acclamation of how 'smart' I am, I have received several PMs and have decided to make a post about how I actually did it- how I got a clean sweep of 9s in GCSE.
You may not believe me and that is fair enough, but hopefully you'll at least acknowledge some of the stuff I advise anyway.

Background: I did the following at GCSE-
English literature (AQA), English language(AQA), Maths(Edexcel) Religious Studies (Eduqas), French (AQA) History (Edexcel) Triple science (AQA) and Polish (AQA). I'm currently in Year 12 doing 3 A Levels: Chemistry, Biology and English Literature.
I want to study medicine or something healthcare/science related in the future so if you have any questions about that, do PM me.

The main piece of advice I would give is start early. Whilst for Year 11s the time is nearing at a scarily fast pace, Year 10s, I would urge you to start at least some sort of proper revision around Christmas time when you get to Year 11, of course revising throughout Year 10 as well.
Year 11- you should be consistently and regularly revising at this point. January is basically over and February half term will come around in no time where you really should place a lot of focus on getting some good quality studying done. During the exams and in between them, I did very minimal revision, as I had covered all my content and revision earlier in the year.

What I did: I revised throughout the school year each night- not hardcore by any means, but doing something-a set of practice questions, mindmaps, flashcards, and in this way I gradually built up a bank of good resources. I started revising more solidly at Christmas time and by Easter, I was putting in a lot of hours- Easter is really, your final chance to really give it that big push.

Techniques: First, find out what kind of learner you are. I am a visual learner, hence my techniques make sense: I made loads of flash cards. Loads. They worked particularly well for science because they ensured I knew all the content. I have attached the link to my quizlet cards: https://quizlet.com/FrenchFries26 Just go on the GCSE folders and I have plenty of flashcards with key info, model answers, etc.
Practice questions and papers. Our year group was the first to do all the new GCSEs so past papers were becoming less useful but here's the thing- examiners can't really come up with new questions, so they reuse and recycle old ones- therefore the more you practice questions, the more familiar you will be. I used physics and maths tutor: https://www.physicsandmathstutor.com/ and still swear by it for A Level.

Maths is similar to the sciences: you can't really revise it, you have to practice it.
Essay subjects: You need to plan essays. For English, plan essays for each of the themes and characters, and then write the essays in timed conditions, hand them in to your teacher to mark, and repeat. Act upon the feedback they give you, because it is vital. Once you plan as many essays as you can, you will virtually be fully prepared. The essay which came up for me in the Shakespeare section was one I planned a while back, so all I did was I rewrote the essay from as much memory as I could, obviously changing up some parts which my teacher earlier marked a 9.
For history, you will need to know content extremely well, however most of your marks are based not on evidence, but on explanations, and so making sure you use convincing language and are not just describing will ensure you let the examiner you know what you're talking about. Practice questions.

Languages: I have a natural knack for languages, so French did not prove to be too much of a challenge for me- I saw a word, I remembered it. However what I did do, was I spent a lot of break times with my teacher practising for the spoken exam to ensure pronunciation was on point, and I consistently learned vocab, writing pieces using the words I had revised.

Exam technique is important. You need to play the examiner's game. Once you've seen all the evolution and series circuit questions there are, and planned all the essays, there is nothing that can surprise you- and you will do well.

Plan: I personally prefer todo lists rather than timetables for revision because I don't like a strict time scale, but if timetables motivate you more, use them to plan your study.

Your health, however, is also very important. Do not neglect your wellbeing for your grades, because both end up going downhill if you do.

If you have any more questions, PM me and I'll be happy to answer.

Good luck!

U so clever u my role model...I only got 1 9!!!
Yeah I take breaks don’t worry and I have an exercise session before bed which really helps to forget about the stress and focus on my next day priorities would recommend to anyone who are in GCSES or doing A-Levels 😁
how did you find re? was it route a or b?
I respect a fellow Pole but all the revision I do was literally the night before the test and I got straights 7s and I’m not that smart. I mean GCSEs don’t matter a whole lot I’d recommend doing what he did in a level. Or not, like me :smile:
Original post by young bison
I respect a fellow Pole but all the revision I do was literally the night before the test and I got straights 7s and I’m not that smart. I mean GCSEs don’t matter a whole lot I’d recommend doing what he did in a level. Or not, like me :smile:

You dont deserve your grades then... I revise so much and worked hard from the start of year 11 and got 1 9, 2 8s, 1 7, 3 6s, 2 5s and a double distinction star
Original post by A level RPP
You dont deserve your grades then... I revise so much and worked hard from the start of year 11 and got 1 9, 2 8s, 1 7, 3 6s, 2 5s and a double distinction star


I know I don’t deserve them, never said I do. Obviously though I would recommend revising to anyone because I risked my GCSE’s so I respect that you actually prepared and you got good grades mate
Well I don’t want to risk my GCSEs by not revising and no one does! If it worked for u congrats but we all want to succeed and get aim for the highest grade possible in each subject!
for maths, did you use an official list of all the topics plus practice papers? im just doing practice papers but i feel like i need a list of some sort to confirm im learning everything for the exam. i've looked at the spec but unlike science its really confusing. thank you and well done! x

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