Edexcel A-level Chemistry

Hi,
I am in summer of year 11 and im trying to prepare for my alevels and was wondering if I could get tips on how to study a-level chemistry and achieve the highest grade possible. Tips correlating to the exam board too would be great but if not general tips are also appreciated.
Thank you.

I did Edexcel A level chemistry (UK syllabus) back in 2022 and achieved an A*. I even mentored A level chemistry for a few years during my A levels, gap year and part of my time at university.
In terms of resources, you have relatively little at your disposal that is dedicated to the Edexcel course. A few resources that do have stuff for Edexcel however are as follows:
PMT (Just about everything):
https://www.physicsandmathstutor.com/chemistry-revision/a-level-edexcel/
Allery Chemistry (Video tutorials):
https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCPtWS4fCi25YHw5SPGdPz0g
Davies A level Chemistry (Video solutions to past papers):
https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCjnvQEEejEGQrPT4JVJgbyQ
For the practicals, you have 16 of them to do and submit a write-up for and be familiar with for your paper 3. You can find the practical sheets effortlessly with example questions that might come up in the exam and step-by-step instructions. You need to find the dropdown titled “worksheet” after opening the link below:
https://qualifications.pearson.com/en/qualifications/edexcel-a-levels/chemistry-2015.coursematerials.html#%2FfilterQuery=category:Pearson-UK:Category%2FTeaching-and-learning-materials
In terms of study advice, do it in shortish bursts with frequent breaks between and use active recall and past papers routinely.
Your brain loses focus after around 30 - 45 minutes of continuous study and so keeping bursts of study between 30 min and 1 hr with 15 minute breaks between is possibly advisable (unless you plan on doing past papers - in which case, do them all in one go under exam conditions).
Active recall methods include things like quizzes, flashcards and drawing mindmaps. These improve your memory, which is very important for learning all the facts, colours, reagents, conditions etc you will need for A level chemistry.
When I used to mentor A level chemistry, my experience was that students often did active recall frequently and so knew all the aforementioned facts etc - they completely flopped when it came to applying that knowledge, however, when it came to answering exam questions. As such, completing and marking past papers is strongly recommended. Keeping a record of which papers you have done, which questions you’ve lost marks on and why is a brilliant way of learning how to avoid repeating your mistakes. You can also make flashcards with the question itself on one side and the mark scheme on the other, if that suits your learning style.
I would also consult the examiner’s reports as Edexcel usually includes model answers (which I’d view and mark myself first) and then commentary underneath with the actual mark and why they awarded it. Furthermore, these tend to be more explicit than the mark schemes when outlining what common misconceptions students had about certain areas of chemistry, which may help you to avoid having them yourself.

Is there a lot of memorising in chemistry and how easy is it to move from like a C to an A in a level chemistry ?

I did Edexcel A level chemistry (UK syllabus) back in 2022 and achieved an A*. I even mentored A level chemistry for a few years during my A levels, gap year and part of my time at university.
In terms of resources, you have relatively little at your disposal that is dedicated to the Edexcel course. A few resources that do have stuff for Edexcel however are as follows:
PMT (Just about everything):
https://www.physicsandmathstutor.com/chemistry-revision/a-level-edexcel/
Allery Chemistry (Video tutorials):
https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCPtWS4fCi25YHw5SPGdPz0g
Davies A level Chemistry (Video solutions to past papers):
https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCjnvQEEejEGQrPT4JVJgbyQ
For the practicals, you have 16 of them to do and submit a write-up for and be familiar with for your paper 3. You can find the practical sheets effortlessly with example questions that might come up in the exam and step-by-step instructions. You need to find the dropdown titled “worksheet” after opening the link below:
https://qualifications.pearson.com/en/qualifications/edexcel-a-levels/chemistry-2015.coursematerials.html#%2FfilterQuery=category:Pearson-UK:Category%2FTeaching-and-learning-materials
In terms of study advice, do it in shortish bursts with frequent breaks between and use active recall and past papers routinely.
Your brain loses focus after around 30 - 45 minutes of continuous study and so keeping bursts of study between 30 min and 1 hr with 15 minute breaks between is possibly advisable (unless you plan on doing past papers - in which case, do them all in one go under exam conditions).
Active recall methods include things like quizzes, flashcards and drawing mindmaps. These improve your memory, which is very important for learning all the facts, colours, reagents, conditions etc you will need for A level chemistry.
When I used to mentor A level chemistry, my experience was that students often did active recall frequently and so knew all the aforementioned facts etc - they completely flopped when it came to applying that knowledge, however, when it came to answering exam questions. As such, completing and marking past papers is strongly recommended. Keeping a record of which papers you have done, which questions you’ve lost marks on and why is a brilliant way of learning how to avoid repeating your mistakes. You can also make flashcards with the question itself on one side and the mark scheme on the other, if that suits your learning style.
I would also consult the examiner’s reports as Edexcel usually includes model answers (which I’d view and mark myself first) and then commentary underneath with the actual mark and why they awarded it. Furthermore, these tend to be more explicit than the mark schemes when outlining what common misconceptions students had about certain areas of chemistry, which may help you to avoid having them yourself.

So is using pomodoro good for the actual revising

There is quite a lot of memorisation in A level chemistry- particularly in the inorganic and organic chemistry with colours, reagents and conditions. As above, active recall methods like quizzes on sporcle are the best for ensuring you have memorised these facts.
Moving from a C to an A in any subject isn’t an easy thing to pull off, but it’s absolutely possible. Have you looked at the methods you are using to study A level chemistry and assessed whether they are actually benefitting you? Of course, this is quite a difficult thing to judge and so it’s best to explain in detail to a more confident classmate, teacher or tutor how you are going about studying and seeing if they have any tips or recommended methods you could try.

I wasn’t really studying in year 12, so going into year 13 I was thinking of grinding
Is it worth creating flash cards now ?

There is quite a lot of memorisation in A level chemistry- particularly in the inorganic and organic chemistry with colours, reagents and conditions. As above, active recall methods like quizzes on sporcle are the best for ensuring you have memorised these facts.
Moving from a C to an A in any subject isn’t an easy thing to pull off, but it’s absolutely possible. Have you looked at the methods you are using to study A level chemistry and assessed whether they are actually benefitting you? Of course, this is quite a difficult thing to judge and so it’s best to explain in detail to a more confident classmate, teacher or tutor how you are going about studying and seeing if they have any tips or recommended methods you could try.

Hi, do you tutor A level Chemistry (edexcel )? Or do you know a good A level Chemistry tutor? Thank you do much!

I used to do free mentoring for A level chemistry (several boards - Edexcel included), but now I’m a full time uni student at Oxford, that’s no longer possible.
I can’t name any tutors that could help you as I didn’t work with any tutoring agencies (they often have dodgy teaching practices and offer poor quality support and so I refused to work with some of them). I would avoid accepting any volunteers’ offers to tutor you here on TSR as you cannot be assured of the quality of the support they’ll give.
What you can do is post questions you have here on TSR and someone can help walk you through the questions. Users such as Pigster and Charco are qualified chemistry teachers and so when they do help, they are amazing.