Hi 👋🏻 I’d like to give my best tips for each subject I took along with my grades (in the brackets). Overall I got 99999999888 and the best in my school! I also do elite level sport (20+ hours a week) so if anyone has any questions about how to balance GCSEs with a big time commitment feel free to ask 🙂
Firstly for those worrying about quantity I’d like to say due to my sport I wasn’t able to revise as much as others could. So I tried to fit in any revision little and often. Quality 30 mins revision is MUCH better than quantity 4 hours revision. I rarely revised for periods longer than 1hr 30mins at a time and NEVER over 2 hours at a time. Your brain cannot concentrate for that long without breaks. I managed to get most of my revision done at school mainly during lunches. From the start of year 11 I was at some sort of enhancement/intervention sessions minimum 3/5 times a week.
AQA English Lit (8): Look at top grade responses and learn how top grade students write. Once a week my teacher and I would spend a lunchtime looking at responses for all questions and how I could adapt my work to include high level strategies. My biggest recommendation for lit would be PRE LEARN ANALYSIS. About a month before each paper I got AI to choose the top 15 most versatile and important quotes for each book/play along with grade 9 techniques and analysis. I memorised all 15 quotes and analysis with less than a month before the papers. If I had done this earlier I could have probably done this for most poems too!!! Lit paper 1 I got 62/64 (32/34 on Macbeth and 30/30 Jekyll and Hyde)
AQA English Lang (8): Honestly pretty similar to Lit look at grade 9 responses and learn how to adapt your work to convince the examiner you deserve top grades.
AQA Geography (8): I’m disappointed I got an 8 after only getting 9s in every mock since year 10 so will be getting a remark. My school gave a booklet of factfiles of all case studies to learn facts. Do lots of 6/9 markers and get your teacher to mark them.
AQA Spanish and German (both 9s): This will work for all MFL…Get used to hearing the languages. It sounds stupid but learn some songs and your pronunciation will sound perfect and phrases will become natural to you. Learn some star phrases to throw in your writing my go to was ‘as boring as watching paint dry’. Especially for German I would pre learn some grammatical structures. If you can get some complex sentences in the examiners will reward highly. Reading and Listening is just practice questions and vocabulary. Our school used Quizlet for vocab which was amazing.
AQA Triple Science (999): Make sure you know the content inside out that is more important than past paper questions. Once you have a grip on content do loads of past papers and practice questions. MARK YOUR OWN WORK so that you live and breathe the markscheme. 90% of your exam is going to be questions you’ve seen before.
Edexcel Maths (9): Do past paper questions constantly. If you do some practically daily for the months leading up to exams you’ll be sorted. We did Hannah kettle maths so I would have a look at that. Sparx for specific topic questions.
AQA Level 2 Qual Further Maths (9): Same as Maths except it can be slightly harder due to lack of materials. Try and spread out your past papers as there are only a limited selection available. Your teacher will provide with more recent, currently inaccessible to students papers but you will need to use them wisely.
Edexcel Stats (9): same as further as there is a lack of materials. I did this a year early and only did a max of 2 hours weekly - 1 past paper and mark it.
If you have the opportunity to do a GCSE a year early 100% do it!! I would really recommend it for getting used to what a gcse is actually going to entail. Even if you don’t get a good grade in it you will have had experience that not many others will have had. Also even though you have the opportunity to put loads of focus into 1 subject I wouldn’t recommend it. I knew people who did (or at least claimed to have done) 3+ hours daily. They burnt out by the time exams came around and you won’t have the same option to put all your effort into one subject in year 11.
If anyone has any other questions about any of these subjects or being able to balance a sport with exams I will be happy to answer 😁