Aiming for a 9 in Chemistry

The teacher for my chemistry class is very very bad and he struggles to keep class under control. This means that little learning gets done and I fear of being behind in the curriculum.

I am in year 9 and my school starts GCSE this year. At the end of year 11, I really want a 9 for chemistry and I wonder if understanding each chapter with books and websites enough? (Also practice papers) if not what else should I do?

Thanks a lot.

Just buy a CGP revision guide for your exam board (often your school will sell these) and go through it. Also applies to each science. You can do some practice questions if you want but at GCSE you can get away with memorising. That's all I really did and got great grades in all 3.

i got a 9 in chem gcse yes using the textbook, understanding it, making notes from it is very beneficial. regularly do qns from websites such as save my exams, mygcsescience (i higly recommend u invest in that really worth it!), physics and maths tutor
also ya guy freesciencelessons is ur saviour too do practice papers once ur nearer to finishing content otherwise ud just be wasting them

Thanks! For save my exam (I use that too), for some topic (eg topic 1) some questions are not even in the content of topic 1 in the spec and also not in the revision books. How did you overcome this??

Man Seneca saved my life and I only used it a few days before the exam.
I got an 8 in Chemistry so if you actually try and like use it for longer than 2 days then you'll get a 9 deffo.
But like pay for premium.
CGP is a waste of time and money. Their revision guides are full of bull****. Do the practice question tho.
Good luck m8

My daughter got the CGP books along with the ones aimed at getting 8/9s. Look carefully at the spec. Get hold of every past paper you can find - the science has not changed that much even if the spec has been updated.
For each topic make your notes/mind maps/quiz lets/whatever works for you - use the spec to make sure you cover everything even if it hasn't been covered in class. Find every question relating to that topic and have a go at answering them all. Use the mark scheme if there is one when marking and learn from it.
Keep doing questions - some come up again and again with subtle changes in wording.
Daughter ended up getting 8 9s including all the sciences, plus 8,7 and 6 (art).

We talked about doing this along the way rather than in a rush at the end and her science GCSEs started in year 9. She didn't really get into the swing of it till the first proper exams hit at the end of year 9 and she 'got' what I had been trying to encourage, so there was a bit of catchup on early topics
She does the same method now - doing Chemistry, Biology & Maths - and is predicted A*A*A
You can never do too many past papers as you might think you fully understand the topic as written in books/your notes and then they word the question in such a way that it throws you

A*A*A is impressive!

I will start making notes now and won’t try any papers yet (as we have only just started into the spec for 3 months) but will near the end when maybe the all the contents of Paper 1 are covered. However, I will do end of topic tests.

Anyway, I do appreciate your advice and I wish the best of luck for your daughter

Good luck - making good notes along the way is definitely key. It is time consuming and you don't want to find gaps when you come to revision - you want to plug those gaps along the way. It will also help you to spot any bits that haven't been covered in class. The CGP books break the spec down really well - we are master filers here so each topic had a folder section with a cover sheet breaking out the items. Once they were covered off in notes (and relevant questions had been identified from papers) then the item was ticked off the list. It is hugely admin heavy but it works and you said you wanted a 9.
My daughter's mind maps are a thing of beauty but they take time to produce.

i got a 9 in chem gcse yes using the textbook, understanding it, making notes from it is very beneficial. regularly do qns from websites such as save my exams, mygcsescience (i higly recommend u invest in that really worth it!), physics and maths tutor
also ya guy freesciencelessons is ur saviour too do practice papers once ur nearer to finishing content otherwise ud just be wasting them

Whatever works for you - I would go loose sheets of paper rather than notebooks so it is easy to replace/revise/add sheets in the right place.
I have bought her a lot of index cards for making flashcards although they were more for physics and maths formulae but did get used for things like colour change reactions, properties of periodic table groups and the like.
Just keep on top of it as you go along and you will be absolutely fine.