Resources that teach you A level courses from scratch?

Any resources that cover the whole of maths, further maths, physics and computer science would be much appreciated please! :smile:

Reply 1

catolinani

We do the exact same combination!
I'm in Year 13 and these are what I recommend...

Maths: I've recommended TLMaths for self-teaching - he has a 24 hour long playlist covering the entirety of A Level maths. He is amazing especially for learning the logic behind the maths, rather than throwing a bunch of numbers into a calculator (note: the videos with [brackets like these] are for AS and the ones without are for A Level and I recommend getting through the AS stuff then doing A Level stuff after.
After finishing a topic, head onto PMT and complete the past exam questions right away, watching video solutions and picking apart the mark scheme when you are stuck.

Further Maths: same as above, except his Further Maths playlist. Sadly PMT doesn't have topical questions for FM, so I suggest looking through the past papers and manually locating questions that fit that topic.

Physics: Uplearn. If its too expensive, create an account with their trial (3 days), and repeat with random emails. They never ask for card information, and email verification is optional. I really do suggest asking your school to invest in UpLearn anyway. It really was great help for me, especially AQA since that's an impossible exam board.
Then make notes in flashcard form from their summary pages, and import them into Anki.

Computer Science: I recommend Craig'n'Dave. Their A Level playlists are amazing. Make notes in flashcard form then import them into Anki. Then PMT topical questions.

Any other questions, ask away :smile:

Reply 2

UtterlyUseless69

Original post by LadyOfTheGeeks

Any resources that cover the whole of maths, further maths, physics and computer science would be much appreciated please! :smile:

Which exam boards?

As above, TLMaths is good, but it is much more geared to AQA. This isn’t much of an issue for normal maths, but for further maths it could be problematic as the major syllabi differ a lot.

If it happens to be Edexcel for maths and further maths, I recommend Bicen Maths.

Regardless of exam board, I believe the AMSP is probably a sensible place to start for FM:

https://amsp.org.uk/teachers/a-level-further-mathematics/resources/fm-videos/

Reply 3

LadyOfTheGeeks

Original post by UtterlyUseless69

Which exam boards?
As above, TLMaths is good, but it is much more geared to AQA. This isn’t much of an issue for normal maths, but for further maths it could be problematic as the major syllabi differ a lot.
If it happens to be Edexcel for maths and further maths, I recommend Bicen Maths.
Regardless of exam board, I believe the AMSP is probably a sensible place to start for FM:
https://amsp.org.uk/teachers/a-level-further-mathematics/resources/fm-videos/

For cs and physics AQA and maths and further OCR, thankyou for the link to AMSP I hadn’t heard of it before!! :smile:

Reply 4

UtterlyUseless69

Original post by LadyOfTheGeeks

For cs and physics AQA and maths and further OCR, thankyou for the link to AMSP I hadn’t heard of it before!! :smile:

OCR FM has next to nothing if memory serves. The AMSP is probably your best bet, but I’m sure if you ask your teachers nicely enough, they might be able to give you some resources they will have access to. If your school has integral maths, that should also be useful, but don’t expect to be given a login until you have started the course.

CS I can’t really offer anything for as I never took it.

AQA Physics has several resources if memory serves. I did OCR B, but stumbled across this resource for AQA at some point: https://m.youtube.com/c/TLPhysics

Reply 5

dcb3

Sorry to take over the thread, but if self studying Maths and FM I'm guessing it's best to first do Maths (all of it maybe?) before starting FM? Or should we alternate between them, or something else. Thank you!

Reply 6

UtterlyUseless69

Original post by dcb3

I would recommend doing all of normal maths first - FM picks up where normal maths leaves off. You will find a lot of calculus in FM more challenging if you haven’t done the whole normal syllabus beforehand.

Reply 7

dcb3

Original post by UtterlyUseless69

Thank you! :smile:

One more thing, could you give, from your experience, a rough estimate of how long it takes to complete the A-Level Maths spec?

I'm planning to take Maths and maybe FM in a single year, so I wanted to know roughly how much time I should spend on Maths daily to try get it covered and revise to (ideally) an A* level, and if it's actually possible to do FM also in this 1 year.

(edited 11 months ago)

Reply 8

UtterlyUseless69

Original post by dcb3

Thank you! :smile:

One more thing, could you give, from your experience, a rough estimate of how long it takes to complete the A-Level Maths spec?
I'm planning to take Maths and maybe FM in a single year, so I wanted to know roughly how much time I should spend on Maths daily to try get it covered and revise to (ideally) an A* level, and if it's actually possible to do FM also in this 1 year.

Depends on how you do it and what your other commitments are.

I personally taught myself all of ordinary A level pure inside of 3 months whilst I was in year 12 and it took roughly another 2 months to cover all the applied maths. FM I studied in my gap year and managed to cover in about 7 months (albeit with quite a chaotic schedule).

I would say I learnt the material very quickly because I usually threw myself into the deep end by tackling exam questions early on and making a lot of mistakes, from which I learnt how to go about solving these kinds of problems. Of course this isn’t a recommended strategy as you need to have past paper questions you haven’t seen before to attempt under exam conditions, so I guess the best source of questions to do this with would be old spec papers and papers from other exam boards if you want to try this.

(edited 11 months ago)

Reply 9

dcb3

Original post by UtterlyUseless69

Depends on how you do it and what your other commitments are.
I personally taught myself all of ordinary A level pure inside of 3 months whilst I was in year 12 and it took roughly another 2 months to cover all the applied maths. FM I studied in my gap year and managed to cover in about 7 months (albeit with quite a chaotic schedule).
I would say I learnt the material very quickly because I usually threw myself into the deep end by tackling exam questions early on and making a lot of mistakes, from which I learnt how to go about solving these kinds of problems. Of course this isn’t a recommended strategy as you need to have past paper questions you haven’t seen before to attempt under exam conditions, so I guess the best source of questions to do this with would be old spec papers and papers from other exam boards if you want to try this.

I have literally no other commitments, but completely new to Maths / FM. Previously done Statistics, so there's a fair amount of overlap with Further Stats 1 and 2 (which'd be my options for FM).

I'm just completely new to the calculus, integration etc. Managed to find the online Y1 and Y2 Mathematics Edexcel textbooks online, so will work through that. I'm just not sure what sort of pace I can do it within - thinking maybe 2-3 hours per weekday minimum to cover the basics and then tackle the tough exam questions, as there's a lot more past papers to sift through.

Would you be able to share your rough hours per day for Maths + the subsequent weekly commitment to FM in your gap year?

Reply 10

UtterlyUseless69

Original post by dcb3

I have literally no other commitments, but completely new to Maths / FM. Previously done Statistics, so there's a fair amount of overlap with Further Stats 1 and 2 (which'd be my options for FM).
I'm just completely new to the calculus, integration etc. Managed to find the online Y1 and Y2 Mathematics Edexcel textbooks online, so will work through that. I'm just not sure what sort of pace I can do it within - thinking maybe 2-3 hours per weekday minimum to cover the basics and then tackle the tough exam questions, as there's a lot more past papers to sift through.
Would you be able to share your rough hours per day for Maths + the subsequent weekly commitment to FM in your gap year?

You should be good to go. I reckon FS1 and FS2 shouldn’t be too problematic for you and you’ll probably blitz through them and the stats in normal A level (imo FS1 is actually much easier than the stats in normal maths, but idk if this is a generally common opinion).

With normal maths in year 12, I would usually spend usually 2 - 4 hours per day (usually nearer to 2 hours) studying maths.

With FM in my gap year, I got pretty lazy and usually spent around an hour per day. This is the main reason FM took as long as it did. That, and I did 3 optional papers (FP1, FS1 and FM1) and that meant covering more material.