Mathematics End of Year Test - Year 9

Hi! I'm a Year 9 student with two End of Year Exams I have not done enough revision for, at all. Surprisingly, I'm a decent student in Top Set Maths, and would ideally be in the same set in Year 10 as well. I would be looking to receive 95% and above in this exam to achieve my goals of being in the top set and a Grade 9 in GCSEs.

I would say I can understand all the concepts we have learnt this year from my Revision so far, yet my main concern in the exam itself. I usually do quite a lot of revision, but always let myself down in the actual Exam. For instance, we had an extremely easy exam around 3 weeks ago due to lockdown and the school going slow on us. Most people received around 100%, however I got two wrong from making the silliest mistakes in the history of mistakes. In one case, we had to describe a line in the format y=mx+c, and I forgot to put the x. I received around 92-94ish percent this year and while that is relatively good, sets are getting more and more competitive. I don't consider myself a top student, but still I aim to get into the top set.

Has anybody had a similar experience of constant silly mistakes that you didn't realise until you got your paper back? If so, how can I combat this. My teacher knows I'm good at Maths, but I always let them down by my comparatively lower grades in my set. If anyone could help, it would be much appreciated.

For maths I did the AQA Specification. Lots of people revise for Maths in very different ways, and that is perfectly fine as long as you are understanding the concepts. Most people like to do Exam Questions and then practice, practice and practice, whereas others like to make notes. I personally, found that doing Exam Questions was the best way to revise as I could answer questions, and then check solutions and mark schemes to see where I went wrong and what alternative methods could be used. Most questions in Maths are recycled from past papers, and just have different numbers. But these questions are also recycled from the 2000-2014 papers, so I would recommend practicing these as well as the new 9-1 Papers. But, don’t just rely on Past papers from your exam board, my school used AQA but I practised Edexcel and OCR papers too, this is good practice because you can go through a wider range of questions. Here are some more detailed resources and websites:

https://www.mathsgenie.co.uk – You can use this to access a wide range of Exam papers, and then after you’ve completed the paper you can watch walkthroughs so you can see how to do all the questions. They also have Exam Questions for each topic, I thought this was really helpful because after you’ve covered a topic in class you can do the topic exam questions to see if you understand the topic and this will show you what you need to focus on. The topics are also split by grades, so if you’re aiming for a 9 do all the questions.

https://corbettmaths.com – AMAZING! They make their own Exam papers so you can practice these too. They have a wide range of Worksheets, videos and Topic exam questions which will help you get a better insight into your understanding of different units. I would really recommend doing the 5-a-day. They have one sheet of questions for each day and these sheets have a range of different questions so you can keep testing your skills on different questions. The sheets are split by level, if you’re definitely doing Foundation for the real exams stick to the Foundation sheets, if you’re currently doing foundation but want to do higher, try the Foundation plus sheets, if you’re doing Higher and aiming for a 6/7 do the Higher sheets, and if you’re aiming for an 8/9 do the Higher plus sheets.

https://www.piximaths.co.uk/revision-booklets - These booklets are split by grades, so you can practice Exam questions suited to the level you’re aiming for.

https://www.aqa.org.uk/subjects/math...300/assessment resources?f.Resource+type%7C6=Question+papers - AQA Maths Exam Questions and revision.

https://revisionmaths.com/gcse-maths...hs-past-papers - Edexcel Maths Exam Questions and revision.

https://revisionmaths.com/gcse-maths...hs-past-papers - OCR Maths Exam Questions and revision.

First off, woah, you are being so, so hard on yourself! Silly mistakes happen to everyone, even the very, very best mathematicians. It sounds like you are doing really really well, you need to give yourself way more credit.
Secondly, practice. And personally, the more I rush, the more mistakes I make. It helps for me to almost in my head pretend I’m explaining each step to someone. And of course checking, but you can only check so many times. Also remember that exams themselves aren’t for everyone, but also remember to speak to your teachers if you have any concerns, they are there for a reason.
Good luck, and remember to be kinder to yourself!

Yes me I'm in year 8 and I did an exam a couple of weeks back and I kinda did bad