Preparing For Your GCSEs

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Amelia Lane
5 years ago
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1 GCSE Gurus Preparing For Your GCSEs GCSE Gurus THE ROUTE TO A*S

2 EVERYTHING YOU SHOULD KNOW WHEN: Preparing for GCSEs FOR STUDENTS IN YEAR 10 & 11 DON T THINK ABOUT WHERE YOU SHOULD START. THE QUESTION IS: WHEN WILL YOU START? AFTER ALL THOSE POINTLESS INTRODUCTORY LESSON WHERE THE TEACHERS PUBLISH THEIR UNPRECEDENTEDLY ELEVATED EXPECTATIONS OF YOUR BEHAVIOUR IN THE COMING YEAR, YOU SHOULD START MAKING AN OPINION OF HOW GOOD THE TEACHER IS. THIS WILL ALLOW YOU TO ALLOCATE YOUR TIME TO THE RIGHT SUBJECTS. HOWEVER, BEFORE YOU START PREPARING FOR YOUR GCSES, YOU SHOULD KNOW WHETHER THE GCSES THAT YOU HAVE CHOSEN IS RIGHT FOR YOU. IF YOU DON T LIKE A SUBJECT AND DON T THINK YOU CAN HANDLE IT FOR THE NEXT COUPLE YEARS, THEN TRY CHANGING IT AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. ONCE YOU VE FINALISED YOUR GCSE CHOICES MAKE SURE: 1. The first thing you must decide from early year 10 is what you want to aim for. Normally the teachers give you target grades based on CAT tests that you would ve completed ages ago. Those are completely pointless, don t waste your time thinking about them. We had teachers that predicted Cs for some of us. However, what you might want to look at is how well you did in the baseline test for the subject. We would suggest: start by aiming for an A* no matter how good/bad you are at the subject. If you aim high you will end up doing better. Students often aim too low and don t realise they can do much better. In our GCSE Gurus group, everyone was aiming for 12 A*s and even though only one of us ended up achieving that, we were all still happy with our results. 2. Once you know what you are aiming for, you must start working towards it. The first thing you should do is make a folder (on your computer) and name it My GCSEs then make sub-folders for each of your subjects. In the next two years, you will come across some amazing resources that you need to save in these folders. Organising your resources is as important as the quality of the resources. If you have great resources but you can t find them, they become useless. When it comes to the end of year 11, if you know where everything is, you won t have to waste loads of valuable time on finding the resources. By saving these resources in their assigned folders you won t struggle trying to memorise every bit of information from the start of year 10. The lack of organisation can easily cost you a grade. 3. When you start you GCSEs you will find out that you already know a lot of the stuff that they start teaching you. The teacher often goes slower in the beginning to allow new kids to catch up. You can use this time effectively by asking your teacher which are the harder parts of the course. Then go ahead and give them a head start, you will likely not understand all of it, so when you do it in class you can clear any doubts you had before. Or you can use the time to focus on more time-consuming subjects like the Arts. 4. Another great tip that teachers can t tell you, is that you should always surround yourself with people who are smarter than you. It tends to put pressure on you to become equally as smart or beat them. I think it s safe to say our GCSE Gurus group was the smartest group in our year where healthy competition was always a great motivation.

3 5. In Year 10, you will have a lot of free time. In fact, year 10 was probably our favourite year because of how much free time we got. Try using this free time in a productive manor. We are not telling you to work 24/7, instead try doing something that you like which will also be beneficial in the future. Playing PlayStation because it decreases your reaction time doesn t count. We believe that everyone should take part in at least one sport that they enjoy. Even our GCSE Gurus group represented our school in 5 different sports teams. Effective Preparation Tips FOR STUDENTS IN YEAR 11 YOU RE IN YEAR 11 NOW, YOU NEED TO STOP WASTING TIME. IF THERE IS ONE THING THAT I LEARNED FROM GCSES, IT WOULD BE THAT YOUR RESULTS REFLECT HOW HARD YOU WORKED. ITS NOT ALWAYS THE GENIUSES THAT END UP GETTING THE BEST GRADES. THE START OF YEAR 11 MEANS THE END OF YOUTUBE MARATHONS AND NEVER-ENDING PARTIES. 1. Don t depend on good teachers. For a lot of your subjects, it won't be hard to teach yourself the content. Take responsibility over your own education instead of thinking it s your teacher's job to make you smart. Your grade won't affect them very much but it will stick with you for quite a while. 2. The first thing you need to start doing is make notes that come directly from the specification of the subject that you are doing. If you can t find the spec it will be on the exam board s website. This was probably our biggest mistake that we started too late. When it came to revising at the end of year 11 we didn t use any of the note books that we had been taking notes in, over the last 2 years. We spent some intense couple weeks rushing to make our notes from the spec of each subject. The spec is literally the answer sheet for the exams you will sit, you will start to realise that all your question in your exams are based directly from the content on the spec. If you are aiming for an A*, you must know everything on that spec and you should be able to answer every single question that they can possibly ask you. Make sure these notes are typed up or in good handwriting so you can read it easily when you revise later. 3. One of the biggest reasons why we got so many A*s is because we worked extremely hard on our controlled assessments and course work. If you can manage to do amazing in them then you are on the way to get the A*s. Make the most of all the course work and controlled assessment you get, they are like free UMS if you work hard enough. Keep asking your teacher for advice on how to do well on your controlled assessments because they will be the ones marking it at the end of the day. So, do exactly what they say even if the internet say otherwise. Course works acts like a safety net to prevent you from failing a subject. I thought I failed my Spanish listening exam, but my course work just about managed to push me into the A* grade boundary.

4 4. The hardest part of GCSEs is the exam technique. The content doesn t get very hard but the way you re supposed to write it in the exams can be very specific. For subjects like economics, business, history etc, you can be the smartest person in your class, while still not be achieving the best marks because of your poor exam technique. This can be very frustrating, but you must keep practising exam style questions and getting your teacher to mark it. Use their feedback and repeat the process. 5. When it comes to school tests, make sure you actually revise for them. Especially if they are vocab tests for language subjects like Spanish. I remember I had to learn all the Spanish vocab on the specification a month before the exam because I was too cool to prepare for the vocab tests. A lot of people cheat on unit tests, which is honestly quite pathetic considering that they count towards nothing. So, don t waste your time memorising mark schemes. Also, don t be that person who is always fishing for marks when they get their papers back - it s just another method to waste your time. Fishing for marks is basically arguing that the teacher marked your paper wrong. Even though this may happen occasionally wasting your energy trying to gain marks on a unit test is equally as pathetic. If you do have a teacher that prefers self-marking, make sure you are harsh on yourself (if it s not on the mark scheme, you don t get the mark.) 6. For essay based subjects like English or history, try improving your work by using other people. If someone gets an amazing mark in a test, check their work out and see what they are doing right so you can apply it in your work next time. 7. If you do have a terrible teacher that doesn t feel like teaching you anything, make sure you plan your own lessons. Before going to their class write out a plan of what you are going to complete in the lesson, even if it means not listening to what they say. But be ready to prove that you know what your teacher is talking about when you get asked. 8. When you are in February/March of year 11, it can be really boring to start studying again after your mocks. Try using motivational techniques to improve your productivity. For example, if you are starting a new series, instead of binge watching it over the span of a weekend, try watching one episode at the end of each day after you feel like you have completed enough work for that day. Don t watch the episode if you haven t done enough work. 9. The best way to revise for essay-based subjects, which have lots of content, is to create a study session with your friends. However, you have to make sure the session is effective and you go away having learnt something, otherwise you will convince yourself that you have revised when you haven t. So make a plan, and beforehand think of a topic, or a poem, or a particular aspect of your subject which you are going to learn in a group. Then once you start revising you will be able to stay focused. 10. One of the most effective methods for revision is to teach it to someone else. This applies to any subject, and it is a guarantee to improve your grades. Why? Because it forces you to understand the topic, and to break it down into simple words, otherwise you can t teach it. The best part of it, is that teaching someone else is active revision, even though it doesn t feel like it. One famous quote is that we learn 95% of what we teach others, so by teaching your friends, family or anyone, you are maximising your revision time. This concept should also be in your mind when making notes. Make notes for someone else,

5 not yourself. This makes you write down all the necessary information, because you don t know whether someone else will understand it like you do. GCSEs are all about revising smart, with many subjects but little time.

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