GCSE Religious Studies Study Group | 2025-26

This is where you can chat with other students studying the same subjects as you and support each other as you head towards your exams
You can post any useful tips and resources that you come across, offer support to others, share your successes, or just have moan when it gets tough!
Just remember, it’s against the site rules to ask for or offer any copyrighted papers and to request offsite chat. Posts that break these rules will be removed.
A few possible ice breaker questions are:
What exam board are you with?
What do you enjoy most about RS?
What area do you struggle with most?
Which religions are you studying?

This is where you can chat with other students studying the same subjects as you and support each other as you head towards your exams
You can post any useful tips and resources that you come across, offer support to others, share your successes, or just have moan when it gets tough!
Just remember, it’s against the site rules to ask for or offer any copyrighted papers and to request offsite chat. Posts that break these rules will be removed.
A few possible ice breaker questions are:
What exam board are you with?
What do you enjoy most about RS?
What area do you struggle with most?
Which religions are you studying?

Hi guys!!!
I'm doing AQA RS, and I really enjoy the thematic studies/ethics part of it, although we haven't done much of it yet. I struggle with remembering all the quotes for the essays a lot- whenever we do open book essays I can get 11 or 12/12, but as soon as it's closed book I end up trying to make up quotes to try and get marks lol. I'm studying Islam and Christianity, and although I'm not religious myself, it is very interesting to see what these religions believe.

Hi guys!!!
I'm doing AQA RS, and I really enjoy the thematic studies/ethics part of it, although we haven't done much of it yet. I struggle with remembering all the quotes for the essays a lot- whenever we do open book essays I can get 11 or 12/12, but as soon as it's closed book I end up trying to make up quotes to try and get marks lol. I'm studying Islam and Christianity, and although I'm not religious myself, it is very interesting to see what these religions believe.

Hi! Is there a set structure you use to get 11 marks? As I'm struggling to get up high in the mark scheme, while we do different exam boards I believe they're similar in 12 markers. If not what do you add (roughly) that gets you those marks? It's okay if you can't explain

-anyone do aqa rs- christianity and judaism???

Hi! Honestly my teacher isn't very trustworthy when it comes to marking- I don't think he reads half the essay!
The rough structure I use is:
Paragraph 1: briefly define the concept (eg if it was pilgrimage I would say "On the one hand, pilgrimage, defined as a journey made for religious purposes, is a great way for....." . I then briefly explain my point, then use a source of authority like a bible quote etc to back it up. I then explain how the quote proves/confirms/backs up my point and explain my point in more depth. To end the paragraph I briefly sum up the paragraph.
Same thing for paragraph 2 but opposing viewpoint
Conclusion: I normally start my conclusion with "having weighed up both sides of the argument it is clear to see that the more persuasive argument is x because y" or "in conclusion while many [people of x religion] argue that y, it is clear to see that z viewpoint is more persuasive as abc" as my exam board requires us to reach a justified conclusion
I hope this helps sorry if it's a bit vague! I genuinely think my teacher reads the first sentence and skips the rest tho lol. I don't know how different your exam board is but yeah I'd assume they'd be similar

I do aqa christianity but I do islam instead of judaism