GCSE Chemistry Week 1 Exam Preparation Tips

TLDR: to focus your revision, you need to first figure out what areas are your weakest spots. We can do this by doing a full set of past-exam papers.

A few weeks to go until the big exams start! Either you feel ready or you haven’t paid attention all year and now you’re panicking. Regardless, stick with me and keep reading. I’ll be setting out my top tips for acing your GCSE chemistry exams - lots of the tips here apply for your other sciences too – and a suggested plan for your week at the end of each post. 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. Especially when you have all your other subjects to balance too. That’s why we can’t waste any time and need to dive straight in.

We all have our own favorite topics (and our less favorite topics – looking at you, organic chemistry). When we revise, it can be easy to get comfortable doing questions from topics we like and avoiding revising topics we don’t like. To make sure you don’t fall into this trap, it’s a great idea to do a full set of past papers to show you where you are likely to lose marks, and therefore where to focus your revision.

By now I’m sure you are used to having regular end-of-topic tests and exams, but it is so important to practice being examined in the way you will be examined for real in a few weeks. Choose a full set of papers all from the same year and that you haven’t done before (try not to choose the set of specimen papers as these are often easier than actual papers) and make sure you also have access to the mark schemes (bonus marks for also having access to examiner’s reports). 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://revisionscience.com/gcse-revision/chemistry.

There are a few places where people often lose easy-to-get marks and examiners love putting questions in on topics like fractional distillation (commonly a 6-mark question) and calculations involving moles. Avogadro’s number is also something lots of people trip up on. 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, so that you can avoid making the same mistakes again.

Have a look below for a suggested week plan. It is set out to closely resemble your timetable for your actual exams (without all your other subjects, of course). Doing these past papers will help identify what content you need to revise, and can help identify if you need to practice exam technique such as time management, managing stress, or having clear enough working, for example.

Suggested plan:

Monday: Decide on a set of papers to work through this week. Revise your weakest topics for paper one. Have an early night to prepare for sitting the first paper.

Tuesday: Eat a good breakfast and prepare your work area for sitting the paper. Complete it under timed conditions as best you can. If you need extra time, make a note of how much.

Wednesday: Reflect on how you think the paper went yesterday. Note down which topics and parts of the specification you struggled with the most. Also, note down how 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. Revise your weakest topics for paper two and prepare for sitting it tomorrow.

Thursday: As before, prepare for and sit your second paper under timed conditions.

Friday: Reflect on how both papers went this week. Before looking at the mark schemes, think about how you prepared and how you feel you performed under exam conditions. Well done for getting the papers done and take some time to rest and relax this weekend!

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 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.