How can I get better at maths?

Hi there. I know time seems to be flying but you have loads of time to bump up that grade before your exams. I'm not sure how much of the syllabus you've already covered for gcse maths but my school tended to save all the grade 8/9 content until year 11 so perhaps this is why your not yet able to reach your target of a 7/8

Nevertheless there is quite a bit you can do between now and then to help you reach your target grades

1. Make sure you understand all the content you've been taught. If there's anything your slightly iffy on watch a YouTube video properly explaining it or ask your teacher to go through it with you. I recommend the youtube channel gcse maths tutor - he does great worked examples

2. Review topics you haven't done in a while. If you've forgotten how to do them read your notes and watch a video online. Then apply this to practice questions. Corbett maths and Maths genie are great websites for past papers

Other useful websites my school used were
Mathswatch (videos and questions)
Mymaths (online questions)

If your doing graph questions
Desmos is a good online graph drawing website. You can use it to check graphing and quadratic solution questions

With maths it's all about understanding and application. If you practice this with different topics little and often, you'll smash the gcse. Even if you spend 10-15 minutes every day from now until the gcse doing 1 topic it will make a world of difference. Good luck xx

I'm about to go into yr11 and I'm currently working at a 5/6 in maths. I want at least an 7 and I would be extremely happy with an 8.
What are your best tips to improve so I can bump my grade up in time for GCSEs?

exam questions are your best friend!! make notes on questions your finding hard on understanding and when your stuck while practicing, look at the notes you made. im also going into year 11! good luck for GCSEs next year

Of course this is possible to jump up a few grades! In y10 I was a grade 4 in foundation maths and by y11 I was a grade 8/9 student in higher maths. I really did struggle at the beginning of the year so got out the textbook and did an half an hour a day of maths during autumn term of y11 I essentially tried and exhausted all the questions I could find (past papers, textbook, maths genie). For my mocks I achieved a grade 6, I then went to all lunchtime and break time maths support sessions and started using the youtuber The GCSE Maths Tutor, which really helped me target my weaknesses and go up another grade. I used his online platform for a while(needs a small payment but is on discount during exam season) and he offers free predicted papers which I mostly used just for some more practice.

In the exam season term I did targeted papers that I found on a website called My Maths Cloud, which offered Grade 7 and Grade 9 targeted papers as well as shadow papers (released by edexcel and other exam boards but not acesssible on their website) that contained a lot of problem solving questions the sort that you see at the back of the maths paper. I used the youtuber Mitchell Dye alongside these as he offered walkthroughs of these papers.

Thank you so much, I will defo be using all of these! I saw on another thread that you said that you didn't do much revision during year 10, I'm making revision resources right now, but I don't think I'll have enough time to finish making everything before the beginning of year 11.

When is the latest you had all your revision made for your year 10 content and when is the latest you had finished your 11 revision material? Also, when would you advise to properly start revising, and do you have any tips/things you wish you had done earlier?? I don't think that I won't be able to handle hw/making revision resources for the current content and the past content as well as actually revising.

. Maths-wise: I had to cope with a jump to higher maths so essentially had to learn higher maths from scratch, so had to make new revision notes
. Revision made for Y10 content in general for other subjects: I’m not much of a note-taker to be honest, but I made sure that for my Y11 mocks which usually went over Y10 content or some early Y11 content, that I had made notes for these by December, and then during the holiday I did some practice questions, ready for my mocks in January. (If your mocks are in November I suggest making revision materials now, then doing all the practice you can during October and the half term)

. Revision materials made for y11 content: Teaching finished for me in March so I had made all my revision resources by around this time. During Easter I committed mostly to practice papers as this I found more effective than passive note taking. The note-taking that I continued doing remained mostly in the form of making flash cards for history, making revision notes for required practicals in science, and blurting (if you’re unfamiliar with this revision technique I suggest looking into it, it is very effective particularly the few days before an exam).


. properly start revising: for official GCSEs definitely start from February onwards. First by recapping performance in mocks, then by trying a few past papers after recapping content that didn’t go well in the mocks. Or maybe retaking the mock paper afterwards.

. Tips and tricks:
- using the library to revise (school or public library) as this helps during exam season
- don’t put too much effort into revision resources for maths, or do flash cards for maths (maths is all about practice)!
- go to school revision sessions lunchtime, breaktime
- I didn’t use Pomodoro technique (20 mins on, 5 mins of) as I found this wasn’t enough time for me as I usually did past papers or past questions during my revision sessions but in general I don’t let myself work for over 2 hours straight on the same subject, take a break
- physics maths tutor website which offers topic based questions for any subject

Thank you so much! Good luck w ur results

thanks! I got an 8 in maths and all 7-9s in all other subjects!

I'm about to go into yr11 and I'm currently working at a 5/6 in maths. I want at least an 7 and I would be extremely happy with an 8.
What are your best tips to improve so I can bump my grade up in time for GCSEs?

Im in Y10 but trying to push my grade up from a borderline 7/8 to an 8/9.
I have been using Dr Frost for maths and it’s really good for working through the syllabus and keeping a tab on progress. I also have been focusing on the things I am less competent at until I have them down. Maths is all about practice so I have been trying to do as much as I can in all forms. Quizzes/practice papers/cgp workbooks etc and just repeating until it sticks and becomes second nature.

hiya, i got a 6 in my year 10 mocks for maths then managed to get an 8, what i did primarily was in spring term year 11 i started doing LOADS of past papers, as well as "aiming for grade X" papers on mymathscloud. i usually did aiming for grade 7 and aiming for grade 9, managed to get an 8 in the end

If you don't understand a question in the past paper, what do you do? Infact, what's your method in using them? Do you go and revise the whole topic or just understand that question? My school has printed out past papers for each student from 2023- 2019 and it's compulsory to do them and then we go over them in class after the teacher has marked them but i really don't think I'm benefitting from doing them or even learning anything.

I've started using dr frost much more, thanks!

usually if i didn't understand a question i'd find a video on the topic on YT, like i said this was when i was in year 11 so i already had a thorough knowledge of all the topics and in year 10 it'd probably be pointless doing past papers because you haven't done the whole spec in maths yet. for year 10 i'd probably just recommend doing all classwork and possibly revising old topics by finding topic practice papers which are pretty easy to find if you search them up, and use a textbook or yt videos for an explanation if you get stuck