Bored so I want help to prepare for A-levels

Not sure about the other subjects, but for history do you know what topics you'll be studying?

Can only talk for history and EPQ, but before my a levels I just read a lot of books that were set around the time periods I was studying to get a feel of the eras (so for the Tudors I read a lot of Philippa Gregory!!), and for my EPQ I tried to compile articles and books that I could use (though I never finished it lol)

I'm doing Tudors and Democracy and Nazism in Germany

I'm nearly finished with year 12 atm and one thing I personally found frustrating was as we went through the course, I didn't have a full overview/general idea of what happens over time, but that may be because we did less common topics, but if you like having general background knowledge, then I'd recommend doing a bit of reading (for eg, just google the period and see what comes up, or use a gcse/a-level revision guide, or watch some documentaries) Just remember, don't focus on understanding everything and I wouldn't suggest doing anything too in depth because it's easy to get overwhelmed and confused/frustrated,especially with history as there's a lot of content, and you want to enjoy the holidays too! (Sorry that was a bit rambly haha, hope it helps a bit x)

Ohhhh I understand thank you so much. Do I first get an overview of the time period as a whole or for each topic (and would you do this or is it a bit useless?)?

I'd say first get an overview of the whole time period, and I think using the specification may be helpful as if it bullet points the key parts. You could start doing a bit more research for each topic, for example, if there are key people/events, research that/watch a short yt clip on it. I do think that it would be best not to do too many topics (as chronologically in the text book that would be a lot of changes/developments to remember and keep in mind, and the further the topic is down the list, the longer it will be until you actually cover it at college/sixthform.)

can only really talk about maths.

what grade are you expecting/how strong do you think your algebra is? basically half of the first year for pure maths is nothing new, it'll be a lot of recap of GCSE. if you struggled with algebra, you should practice over the summer.

If you're interested in reading ahead - have a look at calculus. (this is best done from first principles as the new spec requires informal understanding of differentiation/integration as limiting processes) what you can use for this depends on whether you want an exam-centric approach or not. mechanics is learnt from scratch, but you should brush up on probability stuff for statistics.

also did physics but I'm not sure what to recommend. There is a lot of overlap between the first little bit of physics and the first bit of maths mechanics. On Edexcel we also covered moments in physics and this isn't done until the second year in maths.

I can get a 9 but I'm expecting an 8 this summer. I think algebra is strong and if I do get it wrong, I do pick it up quite fast.

Oooo for induction we did a bit of calculus but I didn't understand it well so your suggestion would help me get a good foundation on it. What do you mean "whether you want an exam-centric approach or not"? So does that mean I don't need to learn mechanics now? Do you know how I could brush up on probability stuff for statistics (like exam papers?)?

Do you have any insight as physics alone rather than both maths and physics? Btw thank you so much I appreciate your insight and suggestions.

You'll probably be fine then! You might find the course starts off slow paced for you. (which is a perfectly good time to start reading even further ahead if you want)

Great! In terms of pure maths, calculus is one of two really new thing you learn in the first year for pure maths. You do more trigonometry, vectors, and a whole chapter on a new algebra identity. (which you use to expand $(a+b)^n$ for n > 2 quickly) The other is logarithms which are not too tough either. (which allows you to solve equations like $2^x = 3$ and get good approximations for $x$)

You'll find that the A-level textbooks are very exam based I found. This means that they are sometimes a little bit skint on actual understanding. If you take maths further, you'll find that the texts are more theory driven. You'll probably also find that the exercises are slightly more repetitive in A-level textbooks with fewer more interesting exercises. You don't need to learn anything now. Actually - I think the 9-1 physics specification now has constant acceleration so you may have already essentially covered the first chapter. The old spec that I did didn't. Maybe have a go at a few old S1 questions? Particularly relevant are things like tree/venn diagrams, histograms, box plots if you do them at GCSE (I can't remember whether you do or not). If you've done GCSE statistics you might have also already covered stuff like standard deviation and coding.

I'm not sure what you mean by physics alone. They are very much separate A-levels anyway.