GCSE guidance plss

My GCSEs are coming (very ominously) so I was wondering what kind of revision ya'll did during GCSE season?
I really don't want to sacrifice a subject, and am aiming for all 9s but don't know where and how to start.

My subjects are:
* English lit and lang --> AQA ,Lord of the flies was modern novel, the analysisy bit was Romeo and Juliet ,for themed poems probs power and conflict but could be love and relationships
* Maths-->Edexcel
* Physics-->AQA
* Biology-->AQA
* Chemistry-->AQA
* Religious Studies A-->AQA and also Christianity and Islam
* Computer Science-->AQA
* Food Technology--> OCR
* Spanish--> Edexcel
My weakest ones would probs be Spanish ,Religious studies, sciences exam technique,English and Computer Science so I'd really appreciate any tips for those !!

Also if possible:

Which textbooks or online resources helped most?
How did you structure your revision?
How did you use past papers effectively?
Any tips for memorizing content or formulas?
Biggest mistakes to avoid in exams?

(edited 3 weeks ago)

Reply 1

ewfjewiobfshiod

Original post

by how_to_exist?

My GCSEs are coming (very ominously) so I was wondering what kind of revision ya'll did during GCSE season?
I really don't want to sacrifice a subject, and am aiming for all 9s but don't know where and how to start.
My subjects are:
* English lit and lang --> AQA ,Lord of the flies was modern novel, the analysisy bit was Romeo and Juliet ,for themed poems probs power and conflict but could be love and relationships
* Maths-->Edexcel
* Physics-->AQA
* Biology-->AQA
* Chemistry-->AQA
* Religious Studies A-->AQA and also Christianity and Islam
* Computer Science-->AQA
* Food Technology--> OCR
* Spanish--> Edexcel
My weakest ones would probs be Spanish ,Religious studies ,English and Computer Science so I'd really appreciate any tips for those !!
Also if possible:
Which textbooks or online resources helped most?
How did you structure your revision?
How did you use past papers effectively?
Any tips for memorizing content or formulas?
Biggest mistakes to avoid in exams?

I hope I can give you some valuable advice - I got 5 9s in Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Maths and Psychology, 4 8s in Further Maths, French, History and English Lit and 1 7 in English Lang and I was the best in my school.
My worst subjects were always English (I got a 4 in one of the Eng Lang mocks), French and History. For R+J (I did R+J, Jekyll and Hyde and An Inspector Calls), I used Mr Salles English on youtube. My main tip for this is to just go as deeply with the analysis as you can - always say "the writer's purpose was..." because this gets lots of marks. I did love and relationships for poetry (I have always hated poetry and still do but I did pretty well in this section). For this, I just came up with the comparison poem for every possibility of the poems they could ask you (e.g. if you get Porphyria's Lover, compare it with the Farmer's Bride). It doesn't really matter which poem you compare them with, but just come up with 5 or 6 comparisons for each poem, put them on a flashcard and learn them off by heart. Make sure to use different techniques like structure, enjambment etc.
I did french, but I'd say that languages generally have the same revision methods. I used memrise (vocab website, very useful if you do it consistently and you can actually see an improvement) for about 10-20 minutes every day from around feb half term to learn the vocab. I just did past papers for listening and reading and I made sure to mark them harshly using the mark scheme and for listening I used the transcripts to see where I went wrong. For writing, just practice as many writing questions as possible and send them to your teacher for them to mark. I did about 1 or 2 every week from easter.
I'm afraid I can't help with the subjects you said you were struggling with that I didn't do, but just as a tip for overall revision. It might seem overwhelming, but in Easter holidays, I did about 2 past papers (depending on how confident I was in the subjects) per subject paper (e.g. 1 paper 1 physics, 2 paper 2) over the two weeks. I set a revision timetable for the 2 weeks where blocked out about 2 hours per past paper (make sure to have breaks in between) and I just did them under timed conditions then marked them using the mark scheme. The last bit is very important because the mark scheme is what helps you understand what the examiners want. Then, after easter until may half term, I made flashcards using the textbooks school uses (e.g. for science my school used activate textbooks on kerboodle) or youtube videos on my weakest subjects. This worked especially well for psychology - there are lots of theories and studies we need to know, so I made flashcards with aim, method, results, conclusion and evaluations of them and just practiced them almost everyday until the exam. It might help to make the flashcards earlier but it is never too late and you could start now and do them once a week until the actual exams to keep stress to a minimum during exam period. If you have any more questions, I'd be happy to answer them.
I was strangely motivated to do well from around christmas through to the end of exams but my one tip for staying constant and motivated is to keep a log of when you revise - I just used a spare flashcard and did a red highlighter when I didn't revise at all and a green highlighter when I did each day, then I totaled up the number of useful hours of revision. If I revised well for an hour then did nothing useful for 2 hours like mindlessly watching a video or reading notes, then I'd only write down that I revised for 1 hour. This stops the trick of just lying to yourself about how much you are revising for. Equally, you could do it as how many flashcards you practiced or how many past papers you did that week. Anything to keep you going really. This is the picture of my revision log from 2 weeks before october half term until the end of exam period.

Reply 2

Mina1208

Original post

by how_to_exist?

My GCSEs are coming (very ominously) so I was wondering what kind of revision ya'll did during GCSE season?
I really don't want to sacrifice a subject, and am aiming for all 9s but don't know where and how to start.
My subjects are:
* English lit and lang --> AQA ,Lord of the flies was modern novel, the analysisy bit was Romeo and Juliet ,for themed poems probs power and conflict but could be love and relationships
* Maths-->Edexcel
* Physics-->AQA
* Biology-->AQA
* Chemistry-->AQA
* Religious Studies A-->AQA and also Christianity and Islam
* Computer Science-->AQA
* Food Technology--> OCR
* Spanish--> Edexcel
My weakest ones would probs be Spanish ,Religious studies ,English and Computer Science so I'd really appreciate any tips for those !!
Also if possible:
Which textbooks or online resources helped most?
How did you structure your revision?
How did you use past papers effectively?
Any tips for memorizing content or formulas?
Biggest mistakes to avoid in exams?

Hi, I got 8888888777 in my GCSE's- I am in YR13 now and planning to study medicine
I got 8's in English Lang, RS and Spanish (I didnt do computer science)
For english i did past papers and gave them to my teacher to mark, as well as reading books regularly, I would watch youtube video walkthroughs of the questions and tips from previous students. I remember watching Mr everything English, Mr Salles English, and widening my vocabulary I though was very pivotal too, I also watched the lightup hub videos a lot, I never got the subscription as I used it towards the end of Yr11, but if you can but it I would recommend

For RS I consistently made revision notes and then just memorised them,- I used class notes to go over topics and then made revision notes from the CGP revision book (the purple one that also has exam questions in it too) and memorised everything. Mini mindmaps and flashcards worked great for me.

For Spanish I used textivate which our school provided us with, the teacher had already inputted the vocabulary and then you would be able to text yourself on the words. If you don't have access to this I would recommend using other free resources such as Gizmo, input the vocabulary and then memorising the words. Writing words like doing cover write and check also helped lol. Getting others to test you was also helpful. And blurting as a revision technique which I used is highly underrated imo. I would also use the purple CGP book for this too as some words/vocab the teacher didn't cover so knowing it put me at an advantage compared to others.

As for structuring revision I wasn't very organised with it- I feel as though most of my revision was always quite rushed, and if I had made my revision consistent I definitely feel as though I would have got higher.
So I would say doing revision little and often effectively is better that cramming

Reply 3

aotrom

don’t cram!! learn thoroughly and gradually from now until the exams.
Make flashcards if you find that’s what helps you, or create a huge fact bank or profile about a topic within your subjects (e.g. love presented in Romeo and Juliet, English) and use that like a flashcard? Writing and re-reading notes can be helpful too.
For food tech, if your teacher doesn’t give you resources then i would suggest looking through the OCR textbook by Anita Tull. it has all the information you need in there! Your NEA coursework is HALF of your overall grade!! Put effort into both the NEA and theory exam ofc too

It’s all about finding what’s best for you, because everyone learns and remembers differently. Try out different methods and keep this up as part of a routine up until the exams. Don’t study too hard or cram information in a short amount of time, don’t sit down and study or take notes on something, but then you don’t take anything in as there’s no point in that. Find what works for you and stick to it, use it bit by bit. Hope this is helpful :smile:

Reply 4

acruelsummer

Original post

by how_to_exist?

My GCSEs are coming (very ominously) so I was wondering what kind of revision ya'll did during GCSE season?
I really don't want to sacrifice a subject, and am aiming for all 9s but don't know where and how to start.
My subjects are:
* English lit and lang --> AQA ,Lord of the flies was modern novel, the analysisy bit was Romeo and Juliet ,for themed poems probs power and conflict but could be love and relationships
* Maths-->Edexcel
* Physics-->AQA
* Biology-->AQA
* Chemistry-->AQA
* Religious Studies A-->AQA and also Christianity and Islam
* Computer Science-->AQA
* Food Technology--> OCR
* Spanish--> Edexcel
My weakest ones would probs be Spanish ,Religious studies ,English and Computer Science so I'd really appreciate any tips for those !!
Also if possible:
Which textbooks or online resources helped most?
How did you structure your revision?
How did you use past papers effectively?
Any tips for memorizing content or formulas?
Biggest mistakes to avoid in exams?

Hi,
I got straight 9s in my GCSEs this year so I hope I can help x

English: I made flashcards for each key theme and covered quotes from different characters in each theme. Make sure you choose quotes from the beginning, middle and end of the text, and ideally those quotes should be able to be applied to different themes/characters so you don't need to memorise loads. I would put my quote on a flashcard, and all the analysis and link to context on the other side. Also do loads of essay questions and get your teacher to mark them for feedback. I got my resources from PMT, YouTube (mr salles, mr bruff, mr everything english, first rate tutors), and CGP revision guides

Spanish: I had flashcards for vocab for each topic which I would routinely do, and doing my daily Duolingo lessons helped me to get a bit of Spanish in each day. Exam questions are useful too, and you can start reading simpler Spanish passages e.g. books, websites and news articles if you want more practice. For my speaking, I made flashcards of all the possible oral questions and my responses on the back. I literally repeated them again and again until I'd memorised my responses and although this can sound dreaded and boring, trust me it gets easier until you just know them and it will benefit you immensely.

Computer Science: my school used craig n dave a lot and that was super helpful. I made notes for each topic and turned them into flashcards and just revised those. Computer Science doesn't have tons of info to learn but you just need to make sure you learn them and learn them well. I did OCR and I noticed that they tended to repeat exam questions, so doing past papers and memorising the mark schemes really helped me to score highly. Also practice your programming skills -time2code, smartrevise, and csuk were platforms my school used and they were so so helpful because you can practice all the key skills you need to know. Smart revise was so good -they have countless quizzes and exam questions for all the topics.

I hope this helps, and let me know if you have any questions x

Reply 5

how_to_exist?

Original post

by acruelsummer

Hi,
I got straight 9s in my GCSEs this year so I hope I can help x
English: I made flashcards for each key theme and covered quotes from different characters in each theme. Make sure you choose quotes from the beginning, middle and end of the text, and ideally those quotes should be able to be applied to different themes/characters so you don't need to memorise loads. I would put my quote on a flashcard, and all the analysis and link to context on the other side. Also do loads of essay questions and get your teacher to mark them for feedback. I got my resources from PMT, YouTube (mr salles, mr bruff, mr everything english, first rate tutors), and CGP revision guides
Spanish: I had flashcards for vocab for each topic which I would routinely do, and doing my daily Duolingo lessons helped me to get a bit of Spanish in each day. Exam questions are useful too, and you can start reading simpler Spanish passages e.g. books, websites and news articles if you want more practice. For my speaking, I made flashcards of all the possible oral questions and my responses on the back. I literally repeated them again and again until I'd memorised my responses and although this can sound dreaded and boring, trust me it gets easier until you just know them and it will benefit you immensely.
Computer Science: my school used craig n dave a lot and that was super helpful. I made notes for each topic and turned them into flashcards and just revised those. Computer Science doesn't have tons of info to learn but you just need to make sure you learn them and learn them well. I did OCR and I noticed that they tended to repeat exam questions, so doing past papers and memorising the mark schemes really helped me to score highly. Also practice your programming skills -time2code, smartrevise, and csuk were platforms my school used and they were so so helpful because you can practice all the key skills you need to know. Smart revise was so good -they have countless quizzes and exam questions for all the topics.
I hope this helps, and let me know if you have any questions x

OMG SOMEONE WHO ACC DOES COMPUTER SCIENCE thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou !!!! i have a lot of trouble writing pseudocode bc our school takes it to be assumed knowledge for some reason??, and after researching online I haven't really found any resources that teach you each thing step by step like w3schools does, so I was wondering, do you know of any resources that helped you learn it? Also AQA is very strict about the w

Also congrats on getting straight 9s !!! What was your study schedule day-to-day with so many subjects, and how often did you study? tysmmm!!

Reply 6

acruelsummer

you're welcome I'm glad to be of help :smile:

our school didn't teach us pseudocode either but for our exams at least, we could choose whether to write in pseudocode or a programming language of our choice most of the time. So I would write in python anyway as it was easier for me, so check with your teacher if the same is applicable to you. I'd say study past papers to learn how they write pseudocode and how it differs to normal python, and OCR had a document with their pseudocode so perhaps AQA has one too.

also thank you for the lovely message :smile:

honestly I had a big workload cause I did ten subjects and they were heavy ones too. I made so many study schedules over the years cause they would fail each time 😕 , so I'd say try making a schedule to spread out your subjects equally but take into account any other commitments you have that could disrupt it. If this doesn't work, a daily to-do list of specific tasks was helpful for me e.g. finish off topic 4 bio flashcards, complete a chem past paper, watch a video on x in physics.

Now you should be finishing revision materials by Christmas, e.g. if you're making flashcards. Little and often revision is defo key, and I know I could've locked in earlier and focused more during my gcses. Even if that revision is just watching videos or making flashcards right now, it will help. Take questions you don't know to your teachers -that initiative is super important, and for essay subjects give them to your teachers for feedback and marking. This is super helpful and a lot of my classmates did this too. If you can, learn content ahead as we were still learning content through easter, and this is kinda late in my opinion. Remember to try and take it easy on yourself and get plenty of rest; GCSEs are stressful but they will be over before you know it and honestly they feel like such a fever dream to me now, and trust me when I say by this time next year people aren't even thinking about GCSEs anyway because A-levels are a different kind of hell (cries in taking three sciences and maths for a level).

Reply 7

liv9527

I do very similar courses to you, aqa for both englishs, all 3 sciences, computer science, edexcel maths and geo, eduqas rs and aqa drama and I'm predicted 9999999998 with the 8 in drama so I'll try help you the best I can.

English lit- I'm doing Inspector calls, love and relationships anthology, Macbeth and J+H- I learnt how to do the essays from examplers so now I get 28 or 29/30 on each, I do: Long Intro, 3 main points- w paper 1 I do one extract point and 2 others and long conclusion, usually about 3-4 sides for each question- my hand is literally so dead after. Just explain everything and any possible inferences ( AQA really love it if you literally make up inferences, so just learn those by practising analysing it and you can apply it to like any question they ask you). Go through past papers and see what possible themes they could ask you about. For poetry make sure you do balanced comparisons so u don't yap about one poem for 45 minutes. I haven't started unseen poetry yet so I can't comment on it.

English Lang, just do past papers to practise answering each question and make sure you time yourself. I do about 3 smallish sized PETAZL paragraphs for 8 markers, 4 for 12 markers and for the 20 marker on paper 1 you can get away with only writing like 1 and a half sides just make sure you are critical when evaluating and you analyse the language. For writing questions- with creative writing practise doing description and story as one could come up which is annoying to do, and with non-fiction make sure you know how to format your answer for each type. For writing questions you can get away with spending less time on them as you don't have to write that much, just plan like every word.

Maths- look at past papers or I think there's a website that shows the frequency of each topic. Any topics you don't get I use corbett maths and grind the 2nd half of the practise questions and watch videos to work out how to do it. The last questions are always a nightmare, but even if you do some of it right you get method marks :smile:

.

Sciences- I'm grouping them together even though I do triple cause the question formatting is so similar. AQA love to make their mark schemes so specific, so for questions that come up across multiple years like alloys in chem, just memorise what they what you to say- like allloys are harder than pure metals as they are made of layers of different sized atoms which distorts the layers so they can't slide over each other as easily. For chem make sure you know half equations. For bio in paper 1 like literally everything leads to respiration, and make sure you know foods tests as I never remember them. In physics, make sure you can explain everything and know how to do calculation questions, we get equation sheets now so it should be a lot easier. Just practise writing a method for each required practical and thinka bout what you need to control. For RPs I just quote 'repeat reading and calculate a mean discarding any anomalies that aren't concordant', oh and make sure you know the names of equipment.

Cs- they don't tend to penalize you on pseucode if you don't know it exactly, just it's all in caps. Practise writing programs directly using your language, we are doing python so I practise writing games using fuctions, lists etc. For paper 2 do past paper questions to see what they commonly ask in each topic, and practise doing the last topic, legal ethical stuff.

The other subjects I'm doing you aren't doing or not the same exam board so I won't type it out, but if anyone else is curious I can explain what I do to revise.

General stuff:
Grind PMT past papers
I don't like flashcards but some people find them useful.
Make sure you know all the content very well as they love to ask you questions where you need to apply your knowledge, so I grind seneca, and for RS make mind maps around the specification.
I revise for like 1 hour to 1 hour 30 minutes every night, and makes sure you fully revise for topic tests as it will make revising for mocks easier as you will remember the content better. I use revision guides to help go over content, I like to annotate it explaining the content in my own words. In exams in subjects where you aren't running out of time especially just fully explain everything to guarantee you cover anything they might want.

Hope this is helpful xx

Reply 8

ASharples25

Original post

by how_to_exist?

My GCSEs are coming (very ominously) so I was wondering what kind of revision ya'll did during GCSE season?
I really don't want to sacrifice a subject, and am aiming for all 9s but don't know where and how to start.
My subjects are:
* English lit and lang --> AQA ,Lord of the flies was modern novel, the analysisy bit was Romeo and Juliet ,for themed poems probs power and conflict but could be love and relationships
* Maths-->Edexcel
* Physics-->AQA
* Biology-->AQA
* Chemistry-->AQA
* Religious Studies A-->AQA and also Christianity and Islam
* Computer Science-->AQA
* Food Technology--> OCR
* Spanish--> Edexcel
My weakest ones would probs be Spanish ,Religious studies, sciences exam technique,English and Computer Science so I'd really appreciate any tips for those !!
Also if possible:
Which textbooks or online resources helped most?
How did you structure your revision?
How did you use past papers effectively?
Any tips for memorizing content or formulas?
Biggest mistakes to avoid in exams?

I found it really helpful to actually teach the content to someone else my brother was doing his GCSE at the same same as me and tend to struggle with some subjects so I would take the subjects I was least confident in and teach them to him because in order for you to teach it to someone else you’ve got to know it and by teaching they ask questions and then you go back in your long-term memory and have to sort of like retrieve the information along with obviously having the information in front of you