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The Story of How I'll Achieve High Grades in my Worst Subjects

Hiya everyone!

Well then.
I saw a lot of these today, and they seemed to generally have a pretty positive effect in helping increase grades.

So I've decided to start my own little blog, about how I'm going to aim to get as many A* and As as possible, especially in my worst subjects (hence the blog title! :biggrin:)

My target/predicted grades, with a paragraph of information about each of the individual subjects, are:

English Language: A

In English Language, we sat the iGCSE originally as a different qualification to AQA, but our school has now made us do only the iGCSE. We did it earlier, and I had A* in my coursework, A* in my speaking and listening, but somehow after the exam....

I got a B overall.

So in my resit, I'm hoping to bring this back up to an A. I don't have high hopes though if I'm honest.


English Literature: A*

English Literature is a hit and miss one for me; our two exam texts are The Woman In Black by Susan Hill and Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird. In my controlled assessment literature piece, which concerned the portrayal of love and conflict in Romeo and Juliet and Wuthering Heights, I obtained an A* with full marks. As such, I'm hoping I get a decent question, and that my poetry exam goes well.

Maths: A*

When I first started my Maths GCSE, my first grade was a C. In Year 11, my first grade was a B. In my most recent mock, I got 187/200, securing me a pretty decent A*. As such, I am not going to be revising a whole lot of maths, mainly Shape and Probability. They are my worst.

Biology: A

In each of the sciences, I am not looking very prospectively. Science in any form has never been my strong point, and even going for an A is a little bit risky. However, I'm hoping, with enough revision and attendance of revision and turbo sessions, I get to grasp more of the topics, and it certainly seems to be going that way at the moment. Biology is, however, my worst science in terms of theory. Given my A* in the coursework, I'm hoping for an A overall, even if it's only scraping the grade.

Chemistry: A

Chemistry is also a bit of an unusual one for me. I understand many of the basic ideas, but can't form answers out of them or talk about them indepth. This is probably going to be my main focus over my revision. However, I do feel like chemistry is going to be much better than I'm anticipating, due to the fantastic revision booklets our teacher has given us which cover everything in the chemistry GCSE, and I'm understanding many more things to do with chemistry now than I was prior, so I'm hoping for an A overall. In this CAU, I got an A, with one mark off the A* grade. Annoying, I know :frown:

Physics: A*

Physics is my best science, possibly because you get given the equations so you only really need to learn the theory side, not the mathematical side. I understand the topics mainly, but often get details mixed up. This is something I'm hoping to stop a bit, and with my CAU grade being a high A*, I'm anticipating an A* if all goes well, but as with the others, I shant be too annoyed if I get an A grade.

French: A*

Now French is my best subject without a doubt. As a fluent speaker in it before having entered the GCSE years, I anticipated an immediate A*, and with my exam practice repeatedly getting 40/40, I feel as if I'll have no problem in obtaining the top grade. The only worry I have regarding French, is that because I can speak so instantaneously, my teacher had to say I'm on the A/A* boundary, for I would often naturally say "c'est pas" instead of "ce n'est pas", which is apparently highly detested by the exam boards. Alternatively, she'd have to get an examiner in to show that I'm able to speak instantaneously, which she said is just too much money for the school, but I'm hoping for an EASY A*.

Latin: A

It's easiest to start this off in saying that I am the only one in my school doing the Latin GCSE. It is a long story overall, but basically, I studied Latin from Year 6- Year 8, then had to drop it as I moved from a private school to a secondary comprehensive, and I then picked it up again in Year 10 through a Beginner's Latin club that my Year 9 English teacher did. I was the only one who went to it eventually, thus they put me in for the GCSE, and it is something I've had to do in a year. As such, I've had to learn the syllabus in one year, and grasp the translations in less than a year. Overall, my Language papers are pretty good, but I'm just a little fearful of the Literature, mainly the Verse more than the Prose. If anybody is able to help me- I'm doing Nisus and Euryalus from Aeneid IX, and Pliny's Avunculus Meus and Arria. I'm hoping for an A overall, which is a little reasonable. I'm hoping.

Drama: A

Drama is something I've chosen for A Level, and I love the whole aspects of theatre, but the GCSE Theory is just annoying. Thankfully, I have completed all of my practical sections, meaning I can now pay attention to just the theory. My teacher has said I have practically got full marks in the practical (see what I did there? No? OK..:redface:), and in my last theory exam I got a C1, and was the highest in the year. So I'm hoping for an A, which again is reasonable.

Music Technology: Pass

I have hated this course, and really think I should have taken my reserve- dance- as my main choice. But I really haven't been bothered to do this course, and I didn't realise how difficult it would be for someone generally academically minded like myself to do something which is fully coursework. Have I said already that I hate it? Yeah? Good. So I'm basically just hoping for a pass. I've got the most done in our class, but we still have one more unit to do and I'm getting a bit fearful of the fact that I'm nowhere near finished.

Geography: A*

Geography is the only humanity I have taken, and in a way, A* is taking a bit of a risky move. I got 55/60 in my Hurst Castle Spit coursework, and depending on how my recent mock exam pans out, I'm hoping at the moment for an A*. I like geography in terms of that a fair amount of it is common knowledge with a few key words chucked in, but I dislike it on the basis that it has so many case studies. But if I get a friendly final exam, I'm hoping for at least a high A, but aiming for a low A*.

Sociology: A*

In each of the practice exams I've done, I've got A*, and a few 10/10 essay answers. I'm much stronger on the Family and Intro, but then I suppose everyone is. I have a crime mock coming up, and I'm hoping for an A*, understandably, but remembering the studies for crime is a little more difficult for me than for family. But then again, I used Karl Marx as a study in a 17/20 answer, so it shouldn't be too much of a problem.

If you have managed to get through so far, I am INCREDIBLY fascinated, as this is probably the most boring thing you've ever read, but in short:

My target grades come in the form of 6 A*, and 5 A.
I have already secured two grades, in a TLM IT User Skills qualification (whatever that was all about), and in my iGCSE English, but of course I am going to attempt to bring this up.

I have been offered a place at my local Sixth Form to study French, English Language, Drama and Theatre Studies, Classics and AS Dance.

That's all there is to it really.

Whew. I'm hopefully going to post as much as I can to talk about how I'm doing in my revision and everything. Here goes.
Is there any way you could upload the chemistry booklet? I've just moved to a new school and they've covered a lot more than I've done before at all so I need to catch up pretty fast if I want to be able to do well in my tests. If not, don't worry but it'd be a great help if you could!
Original post by BriannaTheBreeze
Is there any way you could upload the chemistry booklet? I've just moved to a new school and they've covered a lot more than I've done before at all so I need to catch up pretty fast if I want to be able to do well in my tests. If not, don't worry but it'd be a great help if you could!


Hi Brianna!

The Chemistry Booklets are made up of revision sheets for each topic in the syllabus. An example of what I mean is here:

https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/c1-revision-sheets-6162780

You may have seen them before. If not, they're quite self explanatory. In our booklet, which unfortunately I don't have the computer knowledge I need to upload, we spend a lesson each week filling in each topic that comes up, using a textbook so we have absolutely no incorrect information. We then do a past paper of them.

If your school uses those, perhaps you could ask if they do booklets made up of all of them, and if not, I can give you a list through a DM of every topic that comes up in simple terms; that is, what appears generally in each topic.




Just as a side note, they help so much that I just did a C2 past paper and got 52/60- My highest EVER Chemistry grade.
Revis timtbl.PNGSo my second blog post: 11/03/2016-12/03/2016

Last night, I did a few things to do with school.

Number 1: Marked the two chemistry past papers we had got for homework.

They were June 2013 C1, and January 2013 C2. In the first one, I got 35/60 which was a B for that paper alone. In the second one, I got an A* grade, with 52/60. Understandably, this made me very happy, as I did not use the mark scheme at all, and much of it was just guessing. Based on those papers alone, it is clear that I need to mostly revise, in terms of chemistry:

Crude Oil's Hydrocarbons- WHICH ARE NOT SEPARATED BY CRACKING!
Monomers and Polymers (Particularly Addition Polymerisation)
Ethanol and Petrol, Fermentation, etc. All those things basically.

Overall, I'm getting a little more confident with chemistry, but I am still putting ample revision in for that.

Number 2: I updated my revision timetable based on my blog post and the chemistry grades.

I have gone from having 4 subjects revision a night to doing 2 each night. Our school functions on a fortnight basis, so I worked my timetable around this also. In the attachment, which contains my revision timetable, which is currently my desktop background, I have done the subject revision days, and what I study when, based on:
a) What days I have them
b) How much revision I feel I need to do personally
c) What I find easiest and hardest to understand

Subjects such as French aren't up there, due to my belief in myself that I'll be able to obtain quite a simple A*.



I also then took some time off to create a Grace Jones CD for my nan.

All in all, I rate that night 7/10. Due to the fact that I got so tired after the CD creation :redface:

Now, today, I am going to aim to start my interlinear translation of Nisus and Euryalus Lines 367-445, which is just so ridiculously long.
(edited 8 years ago)
Original post by TeenPolyglot
Hi Brianna!

The Chemistry Booklets are made up of revision sheets for each topic in the syllabus. An example of what I mean is here:

https://www.tes.com/teaching-resource/c1-revision-sheets-6162780

You may have seen them before. If not, they're quite self explanatory. In our booklet, which unfortunately I don't have the computer knowledge I need to upload, we spend a lesson each week filling in each topic that comes up, using a textbook so we have absolutely no incorrect information. We then do a past paper of them.

If your school uses those, perhaps you could ask if they do booklets made up of all of them, and if not, I can give you a list through a DM of every topic that comes up in simple terms; that is, what appears generally in each topic.




Just as a side note, they help so much that I just did a C2 past paper and got 52/60- My highest EVER Chemistry grade.


Ah thank you so much this will be very helpful!
Original post by BriannaTheBreeze
Ah thank you so much this will be very helpful!


I do hope so!
Today, my day went alright, and I haven't done a particularly large amount of revision per se.

So throughout the day, I had my typical lessons, and then I had maths, where our mock results were returned to us; I achieved 77 in one, and 80 in the other, giving me an A grade overall, with 157/200:; the A* boundary was 175/200. As such, I made notes on what I need to revise:
Proof
Probability
Arcs and Sectors
Simultaneous Equations where the numbers don't seem to add together properly!

Then, as I got home, I had to immediately help my nan with her email, for she has to delete it. Afterwards, I received a Facebook message from a girl in my sociology class about our mock tomorrow, so I have done a bit of indirect revision there. This, along with the brief scanning of my booklet, helped me prepare for my exam first period.

That is about the amount of revision I've done tonight; I'm meant to do biology and geography tonight, but I don't suppose a bit of a break will hurt.

Bye for the moment!
Reply 7
Tnx))
Original post by Lion777
Tnx))


'Tis okay.


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