Help help help A-level biology

Hi, so I'm really struggling with A-level biology. To be honest, I completely winged my initial exams, because I genuinely am a procrastinator, and honestly I just didn't want to revise, which is a horrible habit.
But, I do want to do well in my A-levels, and I'm in Year 12, so by February I want to get As from Es, which yeah sounds like a huge jump and is probably unrealistic but I can't get anything less.
So it'd be a huge help if people could suggest videos giving in depth content for bio, websites for practice questions (apart from PMT) and whether making flashcards and mindmaps would help.

Reply 1

TSR Jessica

19

Sorry you've not had any responses about this. :frown:

Are you sure you've posted in the right place? :smile:

Here's a link to our subject forum which should help get you more responses if you post there. :redface:

Reply 2

NessHorvath

4

Original post by Devoid_Dusk

Hi, so I'm really struggling with A-level biology. To be honest, I completely winged my initial exams, because I genuinely am a procrastinator, and honestly I just didn't want to revise, which is a horrible habit.
But, I do want to do well in my A-levels, and I'm in Year 12, so by February I want to get As from Es, which yeah sounds like a huge jump and is probably unrealistic but I can't get anything less.
So it'd be a huge help if people could suggest videos giving in depth content for bio, websites for practice questions (apart from PMT) and whether making flashcards and mindmaps would help.

Hi there fellow Y12 biologist,
Personally, I recommend looking at the actual specification and perhaps making flashcards/mind maps on those points and topics. I've heard people say that making notes in biology is useless and to go straight to recall and application practice, but I make notes that I then convert to flash cards, which has worked for me so far (A's and A*'s). But I definitely think cards and mind maps are useful; one thing specifically that my biology teacher said was to think about the thing you're learning as "what is the structure and why is that useful for the function" because they always relate. It's also useful to learn things comparatively (so instead of "what is mitosis" you could say "how is mitosis different from meiosis").

For doing well in assessments and exams, I find it's important to fully understand the content because most questions are application-based, so you don't just have to recall the content but you have to twist it and use it in a completely new way. This means that reading around the subject can be massively helpful, for example the IFLS (website) has a lot of easily digestible scientific articles that would often mention things you've learned just in different ways. The other important thing is knowing your practicals and being able to answer the questions with graphs/statistics and just maths really, and that comes with practice and exposure to questions.

In terms of resources, I can recommend:

•

MissEstruchBiology on YT for explanations and practical demonstrations

•

Cognito (website) for fairly comprehensive practice questions and revision notes

•

SaveMyExams (website) for same as Cognito

•

Biorevise.net (website (I believe that's the name, sorry if not)) for general revision materials and questions

Reply 3

MindMax2000

Universities Forum Helper

22

Original post by Devoid_Dusk

Hi, so I'm really struggling with A-level biology. To be honest, I completely winged my initial exams, because I genuinely am a procrastinator, and honestly I just didn't want to revise, which is a horrible habit.
But, I do want to do well in my A-levels, and I'm in Year 12, so by February I want to get As from Es, which yeah sounds like a huge jump and is probably unrealistic but I can't get anything less.
So it'd be a huge help if people could suggest videos giving in depth content for bio, websites for practice questions (apart from PMT) and whether making flashcards and mindmaps would help.

Help help help A-level biology

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