A Levels

Hi, I am going into year 12 in September and i am going to study maths,bio,chem. if there is anyone who has studied those subjects, if possible, could you please let me know what the best resources are for me to use (websites and textbooks). any advice would be appreciated. thanks

Reply 1

Tulipbloom

11

Original post by Anonymous48

Hi, I am going into year 12 in September and i am going to study maths,bio,chem. if there is anyone who has studied those subjects, if possible, could you please let me know what the best resources are for me to use (websites and textbooks). any advice would be appreciated. thanks

Do you know which exam board syllabus you will be following?

Reply 2

m11m

10

Original post by Anonymous48

Hi, I am going into year 12 in September and i am going to study maths,bio,chem. if there is anyone who has studied those subjects, if possible, could you please let me know what the best resources are for me to use (websites and textbooks). any advice would be appreciated. thanks

hi i am about to go into year 13 and i do maths and further maths meaning i have already finished the maths a level in one year.

best revision resource is TLMaths on youtube and he has his own website to find everything that guy literally saved me lol

know its probably bored to hear now but the best revision technique for maths is just doing questions and past papers. as many as you can get your hands on.

lots of my friends take bio and chem and they say that past papers for them is also very useful.

you can access these just by searching online eg on maths genie

hope this helps!

(edited 8 months ago)

Reply 3

Anonymous48

OP

14

Original post by Tulipbloom

Do you know which exam board syllabus you will be following?

edexcel for maths and aqa for bio and chem

Reply 4

Bean_cat

15

Original post by Anonymous48

Hi, I am going into year 12 in September and i am going to study maths,bio,chem. if there is anyone who has studied those subjects, if possible, could you please let me know what the best resources are for me to use (websites and textbooks). any advice would be appreciated. thanks

For Maths:

Wolfram Alpha
TL Maths (yt channel)
Starfish Maths (yt channel)

For Biology:

Science and Maths by Primrose Kitten (yt channel - also has a full video on the pure math content for a level maths)

For all 3 Subjects:

Organic Chemistry Tutor (yt channel - check out his playlists)

Do check out all 3 major exam boards (OCR, Edexel, AQA) for past papers of each subject, the reason being that; you will have a larger bank of past paper questions to go through. This will be your golden opportunity for revision and will also make you better prepared as you would have more experience with a variety of questions.

Good Luck!

Reply 5

Anonymous48

OP

14

Original post by m11m

hi i am about to go into year 13 and i do maths and further maths meaning i have already finished the maths a level in one year.

best revision resource is TLMaths on youtube and he has his own website to find everything that guy literally saved me lol

know its probably boring to hear now but the best revision technique for maths is just doing questions and past papers. as many as you can get your hands on.

lots of my friends take bio and chem and they say that past papers for them is also very useful.

you can access these just by searching online eg on maths genie

hope this helps!

thanks, do you know any other maths resource?

Reply 6

Tulipbloom

11

I have only done Edexcel Maths and unfortunately sat different exam boards for the other two subjects (edexcel for chemistry and CAIE for biology). For maths I agree with the advice m11m has put forward. My school used the Hodders textbook and made use of a website called integral maths. What I have learnt throughout 2 years of maths is that the final exams are actually more manageable than I thought. Past papers on PMT (physics maths tutor) are the best form of practice. Finished all the past papers first year (skipped topics I have yet to learn) and redid them before the final exams. For stats and mechanics, which was only taught to me in year 2, I only found watching Bicen Maths and doing past papers (and later watching YouTube videos of a walkthrough of the paper) the only valuable resources I came across. The same type of questions come up from year to year especially in mechanics and if you have read enough mark schemes you would also come to know how to score. From the beginning of the course you should stress the importance of writing your working out as error carried forward has practically saved my A level grade (just received an A at 239/300).

Don’t know how different Edexcel Chemistry is to OCR but I have only used Allery Chemistry on YT (believe he has AQA videos) and a website called chemrevise (which has AQA notes) which I used for all my chem notes as I did not make any myself. Hope this was useful but please do ask your teacher for more resources :smile:

gl this year!

(edited 8 months ago)

Reply 7

m11m

10

Original post by Anonymous48

thanks, do you know any other maths resource?

hm tbh i mostly use tlmaths and then back this up by doing questions on Pearson Edexcel A level Mathematics Pure Mathematics, Pearson Edexcel A level Mathematics Statistics and Mechanics books that my school gives us access to via Active learn.

oh i also use bicen maths just for a quick recap before the exam as he goes through everything you need to know for each exam. i just put him on 2x to make sure i know everything the night before an exam or smth but not for actual revision or anything - might be useful for others though i just personally haven't ever felt the need to.

i also do papers i find online working my way from the older papers which tend to be easier up to the more recent ones that are harder. they do have papers at the back of those previously mentioned textbooks which are good just for extra revision.

think this works as my ucas predicted grade is A*. mostly its just staying consistent as at the start of the year i probably would have gotten a B or smth which isn't bad just not what im aiming for.

Reply 8

Anonymous48

OP

14

Original post by Bean_cat

For Maths:

Wolfram Alpha
TL Maths (yt channel)
Starfish Maths (yt channel)

For Biology:

Science and Maths by Primrose Kitten (yt channel - also has a full video on the pure math content for a level maths)

For all 3 Subjects:

Organic Chemistry Tutor (yt channel - check out his playlists)

Do check out all 3 major exam boards (OCR, Edexel, AQA) for past papers of each subject, the reason being that; you will have a larger bank of past paper questions to go through. This will be your golden opportunity for revision and will also make you better prepared as you would have more experience with a variety of questions.

Good Luck!

hi, thanks for the reply. do you think textbooks are beneficial? and if so, which one's? thanks

Reply 9

Bean_cat

15

Original post by Anonymous48

hi, thanks for the reply. do you think textbooks are beneficial? and if so, which one's? thanks

I used the AQA A Level Maths textbook (because AQA was my exam board) but to do questions and exercises I used the Pearson's A level Maths Workbooks - they were really good

Reply 10

Anonymous48

OP

14

Original post by Bean_cat

I used the AQA A Level Maths textbook (because AQA was my exam board) but to do questions and exercises I used the Pearson's A level Maths Workbooks - they were really good

hi, thanks for your response. i have heard from a lot of people that the demand for a-levels is much more than gcse's but can you explain why? is it due to the difficulty of the content or the difficulty of questions being asked? many thanks

Reply 11

m11m

10

Original post by Anonymous48

hi, thanks for your response. i have heard from a lot of people that the demand for a-levels is much more than gcse's but can you explain why? is it due to the difficulty of the content or the difficulty of questions being asked? many thanks

hi it’s because whilst you are studying more subjects at gcse you are only learning surface level content and so when you choose less subjects for a level you learn about them in much more depth. you are required to know a lot more about the subjects. for instance in biology you are required to write a 25 mark essay which is multiple pages long and you can only achieve in the top band if you know content outside of the a level spec that you have researched yourself. this is just an example of how a levels require you to go further with your subject in order to prepare you better for university or higher education.
the step up from gcse to a level can be quite tough to navigate for a lot of people so just stay organised and you should be fine :smile:

Reply 12

thrivingfrog

Chat Forum Helper, Study Forum Helper

21

Hi! I'm about to go into year 13 and I do biology and maths, both AQA

For biology I use senecalearning.com to cover any content that I don't quite understand/may have missed due to being off, and then I use physicsandmathstutor for exam questions. A huge part of biology is hitting the correct mark points because mark schemes can be soooo specific, so doing past paper questions and marking them again their markschemes really helps to make sure you're using the right keywords etc

For maths practice is KEY. You ideally want to do as many past paper questions as possible. As others on this thread have said, TL Maths is a really good resource and I find his videos on YouTube really helpful for when I don't understand a topic fully (mechanics, I'm talking about you). My school also uses Dr Frost Maths which has questions and linked videos, but I'm not sure if this is freely accessible without a school login

Reply 13

_oscarh

8

Original post by Anonymous48

Hi, I am going into year 12 in September and i am going to study maths,bio,chem. if there is anyone who has studied those subjects, if possible, could you please let me know what the best resources are for me to use (websites and textbooks). any advice would be appreciated. thanks

Hi, just completed Maths (Edexcel), Geography (Edexcel) and Biology (AQA) for A level and got 3 A*s. I found the best advice in terms of studying was start early (now) and work your way up, don't do crazy amounts of revision each day, work smart and not too long. Don't burn out and don't be too hard on yourself. Treat the mock exams like the real thing, as for bio and maths-specific advice:

Maths - TLMaths, Madas maths, looking up tutorials on Youtube (especially stuff like hypothesis testing) and doing all the Edexcel past papers and mock set papers on the official site! You might need to ask your teacher to access the mock set papers but there are 4 or 5 full sets of exam style papers from the exam board.

Bio - Miss Estruch, Primrose Kitten, A Level cookbook does good walkthroughs of the final papers and make sure to do each paper carefully at least once, mark it and read the examiner's report. Use Anki for flashcards and download a deck for A level biology, if you do the flashcards for long enough and use space repetition you will learn the content like the back of your hand in no time.

Reply 14

Bean_cat

15

Original post by Anonymous48

hi, thanks for your response. i have heard from a lot of people that the demand for a-levels is much more than gcse's but can you explain why? is it due to the difficulty of the content or the difficulty of questions being asked? many thanks

Those people are right and I'd say both. At GCSE if you had a complicated question then you would essentially get a mark for every process you carry out for that question, whereas for A level you wouldn't get as much marks for so much working out (personally i felt that it was stricter with marking). The content is definitely difficult, because there is a lot more to learn especially with the mechanics aspect as it brings in a good chunk of physics; which is very different to the type of stuff studied at GCSE.

In short, all that difficult stuff that you studied at GCSE cannot compare to the difficulty of A level maths - because it is quite overwhelming.

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