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Hanzala, one of my former students, recently sat his A level examinations and achieved 3A*s in them. So I’ve asked him to share some revision tips, which helped him to attain this flawless set of grades. Enjoy!
1) Use papers effectively:
The most important part of your preparation is doing exam practice through papers. The more you do the better your results. As a rough guideline, I did about 100 papers for Biology and Chemistry each and about 200 papers for Mathematics, but the more the merrier.
However, it is also important to use these papers in an effective way. Don't just start doing loads of papers without marking them properly and reviewing mistakes. If a paper takes 1 hour to do, then you should be spending at least half an hour reviewing it. This was the review process I used:
1) Mark the paper-write the correct answers for questions you got wrong. Mark as harshly as possible, you are an examiner who gives zero leniencies to students.
2) Put your score in the benchmarking spreadsheet, provided by Ucademy, along with the mistakes you made. This is so you can track your progress over time and keep in mind which topics you are weaker at.
3) ROTE memorise mistakes- reattempt questions until you bag all the marks available, this activates active recall, which is proven to be the most effective way to learn things.
4) If there is a weakness in a whole topic area, like gas exchange or calculus, do worksheets on that topic from physics and maths tutor, my recommended exam practice resource.
5) Record any 5-6 mark questions, specifically for Biology or Chemistry, in a separate file. A few of these questions are repeated in the real exam so learn the answers off by heart.
6) Reattempt the paper a couple of days later to ensure that you have learnt all your mistakes properly. If you got above 80%+ on a paper then just reattempting the questions you got wrong will suffice.
If you aren't reviewing your papers thoroughly then it is basically pointless doing them in the first place. Doing several papers without proper review and hoping to see improvements is an inefficient methodology. Yes, practice is important, but so is effectiveness and efficiency.
2) Resources:
My 2nd tip is: make use of as many resources that you can get your hands on. If your teacher is giving out extra worksheets or papers, take them and do them properly. If extra revision sessions are being offered in school, attend them. Take advantage of as many supplementary activities being offered as this extra work accumulates over time. As Usman has mentioned previously, just turn up to the show.
There are also a lot of great resources online. I have already mentioned physics and maths tutor, but here are some other ones which I found useful:
Mathematics:
Maths Genie- contains worksheets for every area of the course
Solomon papers- exam paper resource
Madas maths- Custom made exam papers, made for different difficulty levels
Biology:
Student room- good set of biology notes (Though Ucademy advises that you make your own)
Chemistry:
Chemrevise- amazing chemistry notes
Chemguide- provides a deeper understanding of concepts covered in the specification by using university-level content
3) Writing notes: Having a good set of notes is absolutely essential when aiming to achieve the top grades. These will act as your first port of call when revising content, even above your textbooks or revision guides. When writing your notes there are 2 key tips that you need to remember:
Use the specification to ensure that your notes are comprehensive. I have seen some textbooks and revision guides that have overlooked certain aspects of the courses, which have shown up in exams.
Use more bullet points and numbered lists as opposed to long paragraphs. It is much easier to recall a list rather than pages worth of prose during an exam.
Readability and memorability should be priority number one when writing these. Also, as Usman mentioned in a previous newsletter, highlighting is a no-go.
4) Examiner reports:
Examiner reports are probably the most underused resources exam boards publish every year. Students tend to only make use of the yearly exam papers on the website and overlook these, which is a grave error for anybody looking to attain As and A*s. An examiner report provides a guide on how to answer each question in a specific exam paper and includes common mistakes students tend to make in the paper. Reading these is crucial in ensuring that you can avoid these errors.
I particularly recommend using these for the 25 mark essay question in Biology paper 3, as sample paragraphs for points are usually provided in them to give an indication on how you should go about answering these more open-ended questions.
5) Reading beyond the specification:
There is a common ideology perpetuated throughout education that studying and revision should be an exercise of suffering and endurance. If you carry this paradigm with you then revision will be as miserable as you imagined it to be. However, if you approach these qualifications as a way to increase your knowledge and understanding for the sake of learning then it can turn studying into a more enjoyable activity and the more enjoyable something is, the more you would want to do it.
When I started thinking this way, it resulted in me actually liking what I was reading and revising about, which encouraged me to look beyond the specification. This is absolutely key in distinguishing between the A pupils and the A* students. This is because the question papers are made using knowledge outside of the specification, so if you know, for example, the mechanism of action of a particular drug beforehand, if they bring this drug up in an exam question you will have a better chance of answering the question correctly. Also, for the Biology essay in the AQA specification, to get into the highest band of marks you need to include knowledge beyond the scope of the course in your essay.
6) Consistency > Intensity:
My final tip is: spread your revision out, you shouldn't be leaving prep for the last minute or pulling all-nighters. I know many of you have heard this already, but you might need to hear it again. Put the work in consistently over the weeks and months rather than the couple of days before. You should always be reviewing and testing yourself, even if an exam isn't on the horizon. Remember, if you throw a bucket of water on a stone nothing will happen, but let water drip on a stone, and overtime a hole will form. The more time you spend in the practice room the greater your results. Exam prep is a marathon not a sprint.
I hope you guys found these tips useful and if you have any other questions just shoot me an email.
As always, your comments and thoughts are welcome on the topic.
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