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Revision help!

Hey all! It’s January now and I’m in Y11 and I’m about 4/5 months time I’ll be sitting my final GCSEs. In my mocks I’m predicted 6s and 7s but I wanna try and achieve 8s and 9s I have a decent amount of time to get revising but I am unsure what’s the best technique and is the specifications sheets actually useful?

Many thanks if someone could get back to me!

Reply 1

Rosh32

What my teachers have told me about the spec sheets are that they are exactly what is in the exam. So if you learn them and around them (like the method for a prac or something) you cannot be tested on anything in the exam that isn't on the exam board spec. I think the best way for this is flashcards for the things on the spec and then work with a friend asking each other questions on each subject. E.g. you could make the flashcards for biology and then your friend could make them for chemistry and then you can meet up and quiz each other on them and also have access to them. That is what's working well for me at the moment. Writing everything down also works for me where I just write everything I know about a certain topic in a subject and then add to it with the parts I was missing after. Hope that helps

Reply 2

GCSE helper

Hi, For CONTENT-HEAVY SUBJECTS (Science, Geography, Computer Science, RS) don't worry what grade you are on now, you can get a 9 easy by GCSE in 4 months. The ONLY thing you need to do is find out what exam board your school is using for each subject (ask each teacher, it is usually one of: AQA, OCR & EDEXCEL). Now find the exam boards SPECIFICATION for that subject. This is a PIVOTAL document that lists out EVERY thing that you need to know for the exam (not a dot more, not a carrot less). Now you just need to ensure that you KNOW everything on that document (some things you might know from school, but if you don't know it then find videos about it).
When people talk about 'revision notes' the MOST EFFECTIVE (basically guaranteed 9) notes are when you use the SPECIFICATION directly and make notes for every single point. Then just read through the notes constantly and you will get a 9. The problem is making these specification based notes is long, boring & people don't know where to find the resources for it.
To tackle this problem, I would highly recommend checking out notes on stuvia (a website with revision notes) made by 'CSandRS'. Just type CSandRS into the stuvia search bar. I personally used those notes and got a 9. They make notes in a unique way by putting the exact specification point in the document, then nicely explaining it. So you just need to read the full thing and you will be sure that that is everything that could come up on the exam. Just make sure you use the same exam board

Reply 3

GCSE helper

Basically the key take aways from my english essay is: 1) Know your exam boards and get a hold of the specification & ensure you know everything on it
2) Check out the stuvia notes
Hope this helps 🙂