GCSE Biology Week 1 Exam Preparation Tips

Hey! So, you have stumbled upon my GCSE Biology revision blog - consider yourself lucky, because I am about to let you in on a couple secrets to help you to beat the fear of Biology revision and achieve the best mark possible! We're in this together, so you are not alone!

Sifting through masses of Biology revision can often feel like you have stepped on Lego.

A top tip when it comes to preparing for Biology GCSE is that examiners want students to output concise information. This means that even if there is infinite space given for a certain question, it does not necessarily mean you have to fill out the whole space and vomit the entirety of the textbook back onto the page. For example, writing 2 paragraphs for a 3-mark question is not necessarily what the examiners are looking for. By making sure we are concise in the way we answer questions, we can save ourselves valuable time.

We can always look for shortcuts. The examiner obviously knows what CO2 is, so do not be afraid to shorten your words, especially if running out of time.

That was just a little top tip to keep in mind in the coming weeks. However, these blogs are part of a five-week series, and we will firstly start off by looking at our mindset and having a positive outlook for this exam, as well as kicking off with some preliminary revision techniques. So, if you are ready as I am, let’s go ace this exam!

Mindset

Okay so I am not one to deny that Biology can be hard and maybe even intimidating, but that is completely normal! If you feel intimidated, then the first thing to do is to actually acknowledge that, otherwise, that thought will just sit in your mind and not go away till the exam is over. It’s okay to be nervous! It just means that you care. However, controlling your nerves and stress levels isn’t possible until you’re actually able to admit that.

There may also be a voice of doom in your head constantly circling round negative thoughts. Something like ”If I don’t achieve X Grade, my parents and teachers will be mad at me, I won’t get into Sixth Form, my entire life will end and the earth itself will actually implode”. Sound familiar? Getting on top of that negative internal talk is a really important factor to nailing these exams. While Biology may be hard, if other people can do it, why can’t you? Developing a positive and resilient mindset will make the next few weeks much more manageable - telling that little voice in your head that is screaming ”This is impossible” to SHUT UP is a great start.

Just like in the movie "Luca", we have to tell our little voice of doom (i.e., named Bruno) to be silent!

Plan, plan, and you guessed it: plan!

Let’s go back to when I was sitting GCSE Biology. With two months to the exam, I went over the textbook, and I realised that I had many chapters to still revise for (and no I will not be disclosing just how many chapters it was), and some of you may be in that position too. Just know it is completely normal. Let’s just start with consolidating the information and knowing what is actually coming up in the exam. Then start categorising or listing the chapters in terms of difficulty, having the most difficult one on the top and going down to the easiest. This will give you a quick framework to base your revision on.

Suppose we split 8 or 10 chapters into 4 weeks to cover. We can easily do 2 or 3 chapters a week by accessing the millions of free resources online which provide concise notes.

I am way more organised than you think, so what should I do then???

If you are in the position where you are confident with your revision, first of all, well done!

Secondly, we need to make sure we are actually practicing using the information which we have revised. All that revision can end up being useless if we do not even know how to put the information to use. So, I have the best tool for you: practice questions!

Despite the best intentions and printers, somehow practice papers always end up looking like the diagram above! However, once you can actually read them, trust me, past papers are the best resource, even better than some concise notes from a website. Past papers help us way more than we think. It helps us be in the shoes of a student in the exam hall, letting us practice recalling information, answering questions succinctly, and things like timing before crunch time! While having the mark scheme next to you might be a good comfort blanket, and whacking out a practice question while at a coffee shop with your pals might make them more fun, it’s not a realistic way to prepare. To practise exam skills you have to mimic exam conditions, which means no cheat sheets and no distractions (here’s looking at you Tik Tok!) It might seem a bit scary at first, but the more you do it the better you’ll be until you walk in ready to boss the exam.

Well, that is it for this week folks! Stay tuned for my blog next week where we will start looking at what we can do to further get rid of exam fear, find the best revision sources, and to use these resources efficiently.

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