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How do I prepare for GCSEs?

Hi! I am thinking of starting to revise for my final GCSEs soon (Start in April/May!) and was wondering anyone's advice on how to start? How do I thoroughly revise because I am achieving for as many 9s or as high as possible at least? When do I start doing past papers? Thanks!

(p.s pls don't reply with 'it's too early' as I've had people tell me that already or troll- thank youuuu!!)

Reply 1

JohnWatersFan

Original post

by 𝕷𝖆𝖎𝖇𝖆

Hi! I am thinking of starting to revise for my final GCSEs soon (Start in April/May!) and was wondering anyone's advice on how to start? How do I thoroughly revise because I am achieving for as many 9s or as high as possible at least? When do I start doing past papers? Thanks!
(p.s pls don't reply with 'it's too early' as I've had people tell me that already or troll- thank youuuu!!)

Hi! I don’t think it’s too early at all- i wish I’d been as willing to revise early during my GCSEs lol. I’m in year 13 now, with a couple GCSE grade 9s under my belt, so helpfully i can help a little..

For any sort of memorisation, flash cards are your best friends. Either you can get an app, or honestly i found that just cut up notecards worked great. Put a question or prompt on one side and bullet points on the other- not full sentences, just bullet points with key info. This is helpful because it makes you recall overall concepts, not just parrot phrases back to yourself. Repetition repetition repetition! If you keep doing them, the content will become second nature.

I would hold off on practice questions until closer to the time, but for essay questions they can be helpful practice IF you get them marked. Just writing them isn’t enough, you need to get feedback and improve, or else its a bit of a waste of time and you might aswell go have fun!!

If you can, get someone you can infodump to. It helped me loads in English just telling people the plots of my texts to help sort out how plot points connect and all that. Get passionate about the stories, even if you don’t actually care that much. Tell someone all about Lord of the files and why you absolutely haaaattee jack, even if you don’t actually care. Same works for other subjects, like telling someone about history as if its juicy gossip.

And don't stress too hard. At the end of the day, you’ve got time! I pinkie swear it’s not that deep. At the time it felt like the biggest deal in the world but on god it’s not. Honestly by term 2 of sixth form i was so apathetic to my GCSEs- I can’t even remember what physics grade i got. That’s not to say don't try, but don’t have a breakdown over it :smile: