A-Level Chemistry Week 1 Exam Preparation Tips

TLDR: start your revision off with a full set of past-exam papers to ensure the rest of your revision is focused on exactly where you need it.

We’re finally here. The end of your school career is in sight and all that stands between present you and having-one-of-the-best-and-longest-summers-ever you are a handful of exams. It can feel exciting, overwhelming, and scary to feel like the last two years of work have boiled down to just a few hours of work, but with a good, healthy mindset and a well-thought-out revision plan, you’ll have aced the exams and be enjoying a well-earned holiday in no time! Over the next few weeks, I’ll be setting out my top tips for acing your A-level chemistry exams. The long and short of it is, unsurprisingly, to do lots of past-exam papers and to take care of your mental and physical health, but this is a lot easier said than done. So, stick with me and keep reading. We’re kicking off week one of prep with… drumroll please… a full set of exam papers!

To make sure we don’t waste any time and dive right in to working on areas we really do need to work on, doing a full set of exam papers is a long but necessary first step. A lot of the time, students get comfortable doing questions from their favorite topic and completely neglect revising their weak spots. I, too, am 100% guilty of this. When I was revising for my A-level exams, I loved a cheeky titration question, so spent way too much time breezing through these, while completely neglecting anything closely related to organic synthesis and/or transition metals which I hated. To make sure you’re using your time wisely, you are going to have to be strict and well-disciplined with yourself. Doing a full set of past papers will show you where you are likely to lose marks, and therefore where to focus your revision.

I’m recommending a full set of exam papers to cover all the bases and get familiar with all the papers you’ll be sitting for real in a few weeks. Choose a full set all from the same year (ideally not the set of specimen papers as these are often easier than actual papers, and also a set you haven’t done before) and make sure you also have access to the mark schemes (bonus marks for also having access to examiner’s reports). There have been so many times where students have told me they did a paper but didn’t mark it. Let me be clear: there is absolutely no point doing a paper if you don’t mark it. I want to also go one step further and say you will learn better if you mark your own work (we’ll come back to this next week). To find these papers, mark schemes, and examiners reports, have a look at what is available from your specification’s website, or revision sites like https://www.physicsandmathstutor.com/ and https://www.a-levelchemistry.co.uk/.

Before you start, reflect on where you know your weak spots are. There are a few places where people often lose really easy-to get marks, like not learning flame colours correctly. Other areas that examiners love and are worth revising before diving into papers are how to do unit conversions and tackling those long (and worth-a-lot-of-marks) titration questions (my fave). Spend a little bit of time running through some flash cards or looking over old tests you’ve done and noting where you’ve made mistakes before.

It can be helpful to do the set spread throughout the week and under timed conditions in as close to exam conditions as you can get. Make sure you have a quiet spot to work uninterrupted for a few hours and have a glass of water with you. Doing these papers under exam conditions can help the real exams feel less daunting as you’ve practiced the whole exam process before. While past papers help identify what content we need to revise, they also can help identify if we need to practice exam technique such as time management, managing stress, or having clear enough working, for example.

As you prepare to do and while you’re doing the papers, pay special attention to a few things. Note down which topics and parts of the specification are you struggle with the most. Also note down how are you felt going into the “exam” - did you feel nervous? How did you sleep the night before? Did you feel like you had enough time to answer all the questions? Were you able to stay focused? And don’t worry at this point if you really struggled with the papers – there is more than enough time to work on any issues that you’ve identified. Well done for getting the papers done – take some time to rest and reflect and then we’ll mark them and plan the next step of revision! (Bonus points for understanding the Sam Jackson meme).

Have any questions about how to prepare for your A-Level exams? Having problems with any hard to understand content or tricky past exam questions? Then ask Martha. Martha will be hosting a series of Q&A webinars in the 2 weeks before final exams. Post your questions here, and Martha will answer them in these sessions.