GCSE Chemistry Week 4 Exam Preparation Tips

TLDR: Variety is the spice of life, so let’s switch it up! Same suggested plan as last week, but with some different ideas on how to prepare for the papers this week.

With a few weeks to go and content for maybe up to 25 exams all in your head, you might be getting a bit tired of doing papers, marking papers, revising for papers, and repeating. You may also feel like the resources you’ve been using to revise have nothing else to give. This week I’m laying out some revision ideas you might not have tried yet which could give you a bit of a novelty boost (like a good meme gives).

- Redo past papers you’ve done and compare: you don’t necessarily have to do entire papers again, but choose questions you found particularly challenging to redo. How does it feel to do them again? Hopefully easier, but are there parts of the question you still feel like you struggle with? This can be a good way to identify where to focus some more revision.

- ‘Write down your whole thought process for a tricky question: every single thought. From start to finish. Often, I’ve had students look at a question and immediately think they don’t know the answer. Instead of giving up and losing out on a few marks, write out a few ideas and see where they lead you. It can be surprising how much you do know if you just give yourself a couple of minutes to think things through.

- Journal: as above, writing down your thoughts can be a great way to give yourself space to process and think of ideas you otherwise wouldn’t have thought of. This doesn’t necessarily have to be about revision or even work at all. I use this technique every morning first thing: I write out 3 A4 pages worth of whatever is in my head. I’m able to put all my reflections from the day before, plans for the upcoming day, and ideas that I’m working through down in one place. It has been a great way for me to then be able to focus on my work without random thoughts flying around.

- Mark a friend’s paper: This is a great way to practice thinking like an examiner. If you and a friend do a paper together, you can swap when you’re done and mark one another’s. Try and understand why they made any mistakes they did and explain to them why their answer was wrong and how they could avoid making that mistake in the future. They can do the same for you, and you can learn together.

- Write a perfect answer: let’s say you’ve marked some work and got 50% on a question. Once you’ve worked on the mistakes you made and understood them, work with the mark scheme and examiner’s report to write a perfect answer. See what the differences are between your original answer and the perfect one; maybe you didn’t include a certain keyword or forgot to convert some units. By taking some extra time here we can make sure to not make the same mistakes again.

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: Revise areas of weakness to prepare for sitting paper 2 tomorrow.

Thursday: Work through paper 2 under exam conditions.

Friday: Mark the papers and revise your revision plan accordingly – are there topics you thought you weren’t good at that you smashed in this paper? Were there topics that you expected to be easy that you lost a lot of marks? Revise (see what I did there) your revision plan depending on these questions.

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.