Revision tips

Ya so dont aim for 6s when you can get them 9s no biggie man anyone can do it. Ill explain tmrw with detailed steps cus im too tired rn im addin a reply now so i can find the post againnn

wwow thanks

i didnt know what to do im in year 10 and one side of my family says chill out and do it later whislt my mum side says revise now to save time idk

chill out if your in year 10, plenty of time in year 11 as long as you put your head down in september year 11 right away. If you dont think you could, then keep at it from year 10

Alright so first off general pointers:
1. Specification:
> Right off the bat you need to understand what specifications are. If you understand them, you can never go wrong and you've virtually stepped into the world of 8s/9s. A specification is the checklist/bullet point list of information you need to understand and cover in a subject. You won’t ever be questioned on anything outside of what the specification indicates. You can find your subject's specification by searching the exam board and subject names + gcse specification i.e. 'AQA geography gcse specification'. The document that comes up will seem weird at first as the first couple pages are for teachers and general info, at about page 15 or so the actual checklist/bullet point list will start.
> The spec is 100% useful for content-based subjects like Science, Geography, History, RS, Computer Science theory, but there are other subjects like maths and english for example that require skills rather than knowledge of content in order to get into higher grades so the spec isn’t aaaas useful for those subjects (so ill give pointers below on developin skills in them subs)

2. Understanding content:
Now you wanna double down on the specification ie start with topic 1, spec/bullet point 1 SO Your focus now is understanding the concept indicated by this spec point by watching as many videos/reading as much on the concept until you know it like the back of your hand. To check if you really understand something, explain the concept outloud or in your head even, as if you were explaining to a 5 year old kid, breaking down the concept into the basics and building on to whatever it really is. Make diagrams, draw out stuff but dont really focus on making notes, right now just focus on understandin the topic.

3. Refining: Once you’ve understood the concept of the spec point, you wana make notes for it which you can refer back to whenever you need to. First off, in my opinion the best way to make notes is through google docs/word and copyin n pasting the topic’s specification into it. Then go ahead and write your notes for the concept under the spec point it relates to. Generally, the way you wanna write your notes are firstly to write em in your own words from your own understanding, then refine them by going onto exam-board specific resources like seneca and savemyexams as well as the exam board's own textbook and adjust your notes to be entirely specific to the spec point above. The key is to make notes that cover absolutely everything you need to know, nothing more and nothing less.

4. Memorising content: Now you gotta make sure that you dont forget your understanding of the spec point. There are so many ways to memorise and keep track of info, however they all boil down to a key method called ‘active recall’ which has a whole science of its own try searching vids on it you’ll get me. Feel free to look for methods of active recall that work for you thru yt but for me flashcards worked best. As soon as i finished understanding content, n makin its notes, id copy the notes into physical flashcard form so i could go over them anytime ie make use of travel time to and from school.

5. Past questions: These are really important because alot of the time, especially in science, questions are recycled with slight variations so if youre already familiar then nice you got an upperhand in the exam then. Physics and maths tutor has many past questions by topic for most subjects so go ahead and do as many as you can, making a note at the back of your book or at the end of the google doc/word document with your notes of any questions that were particularly hard to get so you can come back to them and hopefully ace them in the future.

6. Pace: if youre in year 11 rn you absolutely gotta make a goal-table, NOT a timetable cus timetables are useless istg forget them, switch to goal tables. These are basically calculations of what you need to cover every single day/week day to get all the content done for a subject by a certain deadline ie january. So for example if a subject had 200 spec points and you wana be finished in 2 months, you’d calc how many you need to do a day n thats how many you’d do regardless if it took you half an hour or 2 hours. Time doesn’t indicate anything in terms of progress, the trackin of content covered does.

6. N yeah get your sleep, have time to relax all dat but if you find time is tight, you gotta double down and make your days are as efficient as they can be ie do hwk in lunch, flashcards in free time in lessons, in travel time, with breakfast so that when you come home from school you can just focus on covering new content n nothing else. How long will that take? 3 hours at most prolly so lets say from 4 - 7 everyday, then you got another 3 - 5 hours just free n do what you want dependin on when you sleep.

To put the above into context for science cus science is hard bro:
Resources to use in order: cognito, freesciencelessons, save my exams, seneca and pmt.
Why that order?
Because cognito and freesciencelessons allow you to generally understand a concept that plain writing can’t do. Save my exams + seneca next because these two are the most specification-specific resources i have ever come across and you can use these to polish your notes to be specification specific, adding any details that were missed. Pmt's detailed notes is just another resource it wouldn't hurt to compare your notes, the more the better.

1. Make a google doc n copy n paste a topic's spec into it
2. Focus on the first spec, or a group of closely related ones, and go through freesciencelessons and cognito's vids on the spec/s to generally understand the concept. If i still dont understand, id watch other videos on the concept even if they were american whatever, understanding the concept is the first step. At this point i wouldnt make notes, just be focused on UNDERSTANDING but you could if you wanted to.
3. Refining process. This is where you now go to the golden websites seneca and savemyexams and find the parts that relate to the spec/s your covering and make notes under the spec in your google doc. You'll already understand the concept because of the visual nature of the videos, so now its the case of articulating them into written notes which are specification specific, which save my exams and seneca do wonderfully. Take screen shots of diagrams or formulas or the qs savemyexams have at the bottom of each sub topic and put them in the document where they are relevant. You could also refer to PMT detailed notes at this point, they might write ab a concept in a better way than savemyexams for example.
4. Checking, although through the process of note taking, you should only include info thats on the spec, you should check one last time before going on to the next set of spec points. N then FLASHCARDS ofcofc
5. And course PAST QUESTIONS from pmt = set for 99 or 9.9.9 if you do triple
(This method is so good that i started looking at questions n thinking oh its this number spec point and id be right, you literally become a textbook inside out because of the amount of focus n time you spend to create the google doc resource.)

Maths:
> GCSEmathstutor’s GCSE maths playlist on youtube is gona be your lifesaver: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZ7brXpdO7A&list=PLqxP5EuGxPneOk1xFqUTt0OZqt4UjlUeV
Now the way you wana use the playlist is by:
> Watch a single vid, interacting with it ie doing the qs that come up in the vid n checking them.
> Make flashcards of specific rules or forumlas the vid mentions.
> After that single vid, go onto mathsgenie and find the vid that you just did ‘s topic by searchin it and then doin the qs there.
> Do the same with MathsUpgrade.
> if you have time, go ahead and do some from doctorfrostmaths but thats just a stretch really.
> As you do every single q, make a physical flashcard of questions that have twists or are particularly hard cus its these twists n not to obvious steps in qs that keep comin up in papers so if you keep reminding yourself on how to tackle them you’ll ace the exam. Do those flashcards whenever you got time ie free time in lesson/travel/with breakfast etc.
> Pacin maths would be somat like a vid a day + its questions? You’d be done in about 6 months with weekends off n that would be just in time for your exams if your in year 11. But thats a bit risky so id say maybe take only one day off instead of two but idk depends on what grade you are at rn.

English LANG:
> no.1 way to maximise marks here is by memorising a pre-made full mark answer for paper 1 sec b n writin it in the exam savin you time for other qs + get those 40 marks nailed. First off you needa make the pre-made answer in the first place, its gotta include a description of a place + description of two people + dialogue between them. Make sure it includes as many lang + struc devices cus thats literally what the markin boils down to. Get it marked by your teacher, get her feedback and basically improve until your scorin full marks. If you need an example base ans i got one if you want. In the exam then you’d basically rewrite it all from memory but tweaking it to the written prompt (you wouldnt do the pic for the base ans method cus pic descriptions dont allow stories/descriptions outside the pic)
> All of lang p1 and alot of lang p2 is based on being able to recognise structure/language techniques and then bein able to talk ab their effects. To get confident in this you wana search ‘lang devices’ and ‘structure devices’ and watch every single vid you can get your hands on, noting down everything new you learn. There'll be so many dif views on effects in all the vids which is exactly what you want, you wanna have exposure to as many variations of effects the same type of devices can have so you can use them in your writin later.
> Watch mr everything english n mr salles on their breakdown vids of each q from each paper theyre super helpful, and in general any vid you can come across
> Answer qs from past papers, take em to your teacher, take their feedback and always aim to make the next piece of work better than the last.
> Make a word chart n bluetack it above where you work with way better synonyms of normal words used in most people work like good/bad/powerful/weak/beautiful, adding more synonyms to it as you progress n actively use them more and more in every next piece of work.
AND Neva eva use ‘show’ or ‘highlight’ use other words/phrases like ‘elucidate’ ‘delineate’ ‘puts forth’ ‘characterises’ ‘causes the course of thought to align with’ ygm just anything but show

English LIT: illpost ab it later cus im ab to pass out