GCSE’s

Oh okay, so I did Separate sciences (Edexcel), Maths (Edexcel), English lit & lang (AQA), French (AQA), Spanish (AQA) Art (AQA) and Music (OCR), so there are some subjects that I can advise you on how to revise / how much revision you might actually need to do.

I got a Grade 9 in all 3 sciences, and for revision I literally just used the CGP guide and this App/Website called Quizlet. Whenever I had an end of topic test, I would make a Quizlet for it, so by halfway through Year 11 I had quite a lot of flash cards ready in each science. I finished doing Quizlets for all the topics in Biology & Chemistry in the Easter Holidays, however Physics didn’t really go that way... It was my worst science and I couldn’t be bothered to revise for it, especially Paper 2, so on the day before Paper 2 I had no flash cards for it and had done NO revision, so I ended up having to memorise the CGP guide by walking around my room saying paragraphs out loud until about midnight. I then woke up at 5am on the day of the exam to try and finish learning Topics 8&9, it was a massive stress. I don’t recommend this, but at least it shows that you really don’t need to be stressing that much about revision at the beginning of Year 11, if worst comes to worst, it is possible to do it all the day before 😂. So for science then, I recommend making Quizlets or flash cards using the CGP guide whenever you have the time, there’ll be plenty of time for this in the Easter Holidays when everyone is just revising. Literally, don’t worry about any other textbooks, the CGP guide had it all in there and has the best format for easy reading.

For maths, I was 2 marks off a 9. Throughout the year, every other Friday our teacher would set us a practice paper to do for homework. These were so useful, so if your teacher doesn’t do this, go onto the website of whatever exam board you are doing, and see if you can print off some of the past papers and maybe set yourself one for every other Friday too. Don’t worry about doing it timed, just try and see if you can answer the questions. Some of the 6 mark Qs are quite confusing, so if you don’t understand them, don’t worry, just look at the mark scheme and try to understand how they did it. Highlight the questions you didn’t understand, so when it comes nearer to the exam, you can go back and attempt any of the highlighted questions to see if you can do them. I made a Quizlet on Proof, and then another one on the non-calc exact values of Cos, Sin & Tan, so I’d recommend having flash cards on these as well as formulas, e.g. the Quadratic formula.

For English Language, I got an 8. If I could go back, I would do some more practice papers, but don’t worry about doing these all the time just yet. Just do the ones you might be set for homework in lessons or something, unless you’re really struggling, in which case it might be worth speaking to you’re teacher and possibly doing a practice paper every other week or something. I’d just advise that you become familiar with 1. What the examiner is looking for in each question, 2. The amount of time you’re meant to spend on each question, 3. The correct terminology for different language & structural techniques the writer might use, & 4. Some really cool phrases and descriptive words that you can include in the descriptive writing. For this, I really recommend the website Descriptionari. Search up some things or feelings you want to convey on Descriptionari that might come up in the photo for the descriptive writing, e.g. night sky, sunset, snow, a fire, rain, cosy, cold weather etc... for inspiration on some really good descriptive writing other people have written. I only started doing this the weekend before the exam, so again, don’t stress about doing loads of revision just yet, But if it helps for essays that you do in class, then feel free to start doing that now. I also recommend watching Mr Salles videos when you can.

For English Literature, I got a 9. I literally didn’t understand any of the books we were doing throughout year 11 (Macbeth, Jekyll & Hyde, An Inspector Calls, Power & Conflict poetry). I would get between 18-22 / 30 for the essays I wrote in class. All through until the end of April, I didn’t put much effort into English Lit as I thought the books were a bit boring and the guides the school had given us weren’t good (they were YorkNotes, I strongly don’t recommend the YorkNotes guides, all of the points are so basic). Then, however, at the beginning of May, I ordered the CGP guide for each of my books. They were sooo useful, and some of the points and context they were giving for each theme/character were quite advanced. I also found the website SparkNoted, which also gives really advanced points and analysis’ of the characters and themes, and THEN I watched Mr Salles videos, which were sooo helpful. After all this, suddenly the books seemed so interesting and I realised there was so much to say about them. Therefore, I started making really scruffy mind maps of A4 paper where for each theme I’d write down 3 or 4 complex points I could write about, loads of short quotes and also I’d do mindmaps on each character. These were sooo messy but not caring about the appearance of them actually helped me to revise better and include a bit more depth. For Macbeth and Jekyll & Hyde I also made some Quizlets using Sparknotes & the CGP guide, which I used. For poetry, I picked 6 poems that I felt I could compare to any other poem I might get given, and made the mind maps again using Mr Salles, the CGP guide and also Genius.com. Instead of doing practice essays, which I thought were quite overwhelming, I walked around my room and came up with practice paragraphs, speaking them out loud instead of writing them down. So my advice for you at the beginning of Year 11 would be to get the CGP guides for each book if you haven’t already so you can understand them better, don’t stress too much about making mindmaps or anything like that rn, but if it’s gonna help then feel free to. Don’t worry if all of your friends are usually writing 5-6 paragraphs per essay, in the exam I wrote about 3 paragraphs (+ intro & conclusion, intro was about 2-3 lines long) per essay and that was fine. For my unseen poetry comparison part, I legit wrote 1 paragraph as I messed up the timing, thinking I had 15 mins left when I actually had 5 mins left lol. But it turned out fine in the end.

For French, I was 2 marks off a 9. I got it remarked, but it still stayed at an 8 which was a bit annoying as I was close. I can advise you on the Speaking and the Writing, but not really the Reading & Listening as that is what brought my grade down lol. For speaking, I made a Quizlet with key phrase for the photo card, e.g. in the background there is ... the photo makes me feel ... etc... as well as some key words like table, tree, person etc ... For the conversation, our teacher gave us loads of questions that she might ask in the exam for each topic within each theme. I then wrote detailed answers to each question using the CGP guide, which was really useful. If your teacher does this too, then something that you can do from the start of Year 11 is to start writing some answers that you can say in response to each of the questions. I did this on one massive word document. Don’t worry about memorising them too early though. There is a good chance if you learn it now you will definitely have forgotten them in a month. Therefore, I started learning these at Easter. You might be able to get away with learning them a bit later, idk, it’s just because I had 2 languages to do this for so I wanted to make sure I knew them well.
For the Writing, throughout the year I had made vocab Quizlets for each topic, I literally made 41 sets of flash cards on vocab and each set could have between 50-130 cards in it. I’ll tell you now, I literally didn’t use these at all 😂 Instead, the day before the writing exam my friend and I FaceTimed and we made one big Quizlet with loads of complex phrases in different tenses for each topic, so whatever came up, I could include lots of different phrases in different tenses. Most of the phrases I got straight out of the CGP guide! This worked really well and it meant I didn’t find the writing exam very stressful.
For the reading & listening on the other hand, I did no practice papers and did not learn much vocab for them. So my advice would be definitely to do practice papers for these, especially the listening tests. But still, you don’t really need to worry about that until next year

So for a brief overview, things you could do right now (if you think they’d work for you) are:
- A maths practice paper every other Friday
- Read the CGP guide for your english books as you go along
- Write answers to conversation questions in French (if your school does this)
- Start making flashcards / Quizlets for sciences using the CGP guide

And one of the main pieces of advice I can give you is don’t waste your time making notes (mainly for sciences, I don’t know what your textbooks/resources are like for business studies, history etc.. in which case it might be necessary).
Copying up information that is perfectly structured from the CGP guide onto another piece of paper is pretty pointless. It’s what our teachers would call ‘inactive’ or ‘passive’ learning. Doing active revision, like flashcards it practice questions, is so much more helpful. Lots of my friends started writing notes, panicked before the exams because they didn’t know how to revise them, and ended up using my flashcards online in order to revise😂

My username on Quizlet is saltybarcode btw, so if you’re doing any of the same exam boards / books as me then they might be helpful

Also, I apologise that this is so long, I didn’t even realise how much I had been writing until now.

Hope this helps!

Hey !
This was sooo useful , thank you for sharing this !!

No problem, glad it helps! If you have any questions or anything about gcses or any other subjects I did, feel free to ask too

Hi!

I'm in year 11 and I don't really make notes for science other than for the practicals. Do you think making flashcards is a waste of time, or is it useful in the long run?

I've already started making flashcards for history, biology and chemistry but they take quite a while to make (I make physical flashcards).
Thanks!

Hey!
I personally find that flashcards really helped me and were my main method of revision for lots of my subjects.

Physical flashcards are perfectly fine if you find that they work better for you than online ones, and are also brilliant as they allow you to draw diagrams on them, which is useful in subjects like physics where you might want to draw diagrams of the components in circuits.

However, they will take a lot longer as you have to write them by hand and also you might be focusing somewhat on the appearance as well rather than the content. Making flashcards online is a lot quicker and the good thing about them is that you can take them anywhere, e.g. sometimes I would revise on the bus to & from school or even on dog walks as my flashcards were stored in an app on my phone. If you are okay with the format of online flashcards, I would say that they’re a bit more practical than physical ones.
If you would like to see how I structured my flashcards, I made them on a website/app called Quizlet and my username is saltybarcode.

Personally, I think that flashcards, whether physical or online, will definitely be worth it in the long run.
I guess it just depends on how much time you want to spend making them, and whether you find that you can learn them easier if you write them out yourself Hope this helped!

Okay thanks!

Yes, I saw your flashcards and I'm going to use some of the French ones, if that;s alright.
For physics, I seem to have the same problem that you did, Other than the formulas I haven't made any flashcards. Do you think I'd be fine without any physics notes or flashcards, or should I still make some?

From experience, when I make flashcards online, I don't tend to look at them very often. I think it's the fact that there is so much effort required to get to it. Also, perhaps because we aren't allowed our phones in school .

I think, I'll stick with physical flashcards.
Thanks!

Hey,
For physics, flashcards will help of course (if you like revising from them) but they’re not essential, they just help you to test yourself on what you know. Whilst I would recommend making them, it’s not the end of the world if you don’t and there are other methods of revision that you can do. You’ll have the whole of Easter and then also a half term where you can be reading the content and then testing yourself by doing practice questions and practice papers in physics. If you haven’t already, I recommend getting the CGP workbooks too. They have loads of exam style questions, and I would recommend getting the 8-9 workbook too if you can, even if you aren’t aiming for a grade 8-9, because at the end of the day it’s still just good practice

So yeah, to answer your questions, I would advise you to make flashcards for physics, but they’re not essential and you can still do really well without them by doing lots of practice papers and questions. And if worst comes to worst, at GCSE level, cramming is possible (but I would advise against it!)

Maybe if you’re finding it boring to make them in physics because of the content, you could just make flashcards on the more interesting topics e.g. astronomy, radioactivity etc... because then at least you have some to fall back on.

Hope this helped!

Hi,
Thanks so much!
I have the CGP workbooks, both of them. And I've started using the normal one. Do you think that I should wait before I start using the 8-9 one or start now.

Also, I think I'll try and make a few flashcards, on the more interesting topics and the harder ones, but I won't stress myself to them for everything like biology and chemistry.

Thanks again!

Apart from in maths, I saved all of my gcse workbooks to complete closer to the exams. However, it meant I didn’t actually finish them and had loads of incomplete pages. For chem and physics I literally only did about 5 pages. There is no problem in starting to use them now or for your mocks, as you’ll have plenty of past papers and exam style questions online that you can use for revision closer to the exam. Orrr, you could just write in pencil now, and then redo the questions closer to the exam.

Whether you do the questions now or later, practice is practice and either way it will be very helpful

Great tips that the helpful person posted earlier. I can help with some of the other subjects. For Business I got a 9 and all you really need to do is do 1 or 2 past papers, past papers aren't important for Business. What is important is getting the knowledge in your head so revise thoroughly, anything can come up in the test! Flashcards are useful but do them for the formulae and whatnot, just keep practicing questions (the longer ones) - make up your own questions to make it more interesting.

For R.E, I got a 9 and trust me - just memorise quotes. Quotes and quotes and quotes, and then practice a load of higher mark questions.

For English language, I got a 9 - make sure you do at least 2 past papers/specimen papers but the most important thing is knowing HOW to answer the questions. Make sure you actually know the structure for the questions.

Hi, I do business right now and I'm getting struggling to get above a 6 due to very harsh grade boundaries, at the moment all I use for learning content is seneca which is good but I'm scared about it not covering all the content, I've learned the structure for the higher mark questions but all my teacher says is to use context and I don't understand how, do u have any tips or resources? Thanks x

6 is really good for now! For us, our school made the grade boundaries like 95% for an 8. I assume you meant to write content, in that case. When it comes to the higher mark questions, ever be ambiguous with your wording, such as saying 'their products' - the case study given needs to be used at all times. I did edexcel, not sure what you're doing but case study information always needed to be used. Whenever you have the chance, bring in relevant content such as cashflow shortfall, productivity, interest, etc - the key word being relevant!

You will have more than enough content covered, you don't need to work too hard for Business, it's a very relaxed subject. For my GCSEs business exams, I went over my excercise books once the day before each exam - all you need is a rough understanding of each topic and key details for them. The questions themselves will help you recall information as you go along.

I'm doing Aqa and , I just thought as I was doing quite bad as the grade boundaries were ridiculously high but thank you for the reassurance. Thanks so much I'm definitely gonna try that when I get another test.