Mohammed Syed, a 10-year-old boy from West London, passes his GCSE Maths in one month!
Discover how he did it by watching the short video below…
Get the GCSE Maths In Four Weeks Revision Guide here for Only £12 from Amazon
I recently wrote a report called: Why it’s Easier Than Ever To Achieve Your Target Grade In GCSE Maths…
If you haven’t read it yet, you can download it from here >>
The great news is, it’s got even easier, particularly for Edexcel students.
The gap between paper 1 and paper 2 this year is almost 2 weeks!
Unlike previous years, when there were only 3/4 days between both papers.
Not only that, but you have a week-off in between.
This means you have a greater chance of maximising your score in each paper.
You should stop all revision for paper 2 as from today and focus solely on paper 1 until you’ve taken it on the 26th May 2016.
Then immediately after, focus on paper 2.
I have advised my tuition students to do the same.
Don’t revise any topics that feature in paper 2 until you’ve completed paper 1.
If you’re unsure on what kind of topics will feature in each paper, take a look at the lists below:
GCSE Maths Higher Non Calculator Topics
GCSE Maths Higher Calculator Topics
Focus on your areas of weakness too. These are questions you got wrong consistently in your practice papers.
Use my past papers by topic to target specific areas.
Save one or two practice papers (ideally the 2015 papers) for the penultimate day i.e. the day before the actual exam.
This is what I like to call the ‘the acid test’. Whatever you get in these papers is what you’ll get in the real thing.
If you’ve already gone over them, don’t worry. You can always go over them a second time around.
If you’re a Edexcel student, I highly recommend that you download my ‘GCSE Maths Tricks of the Trade’ guide too.
What I’ve noticed over the last few years (as a result of face to face tuition) is there are a number of key areas that a typical student would drop marks on.
It is difficult to go through all of them in this blog post. That’s why I documented them into a guide.
Going through this guide alone will boost your final result by one whole letter grade >>
I have given you everything you need to achieve your target grade in GCSE Maths this year.
You really don’t have any excuses.
Go out there and smash it! 🙂
If you have any questions about revision, leave a comment below.
Good luck.
Jeevan S.
Up until this point, you would have followed a specific revision schedule. You would have revised each subject accordingly. However, as you enter May, your revision schedule will somewhat change. You will revise subjects in the same order as your exam timetable. The order in which you revise for each subject will depend on the gap between each exam and whether exams arrive in clusters e.g. 3 exams on 3 consecutive days and then a 4 day gap until the next one.
If your exams fall on every other day, then it would make sense to revise each subject a day before the exam. At this stage, you would have a great deal of knowledge about each subject and efficient notes pages (if you don’t have any for maths, you may want to check out my previous post). Now it’s just a case of memorising all of those key notes for each exam. For maths, it would most likely consist of formulas or general pointers such as don’t forget to write the units at the end of each answer, rounding to 3 significant figures etc. etc. It’s just small errors you made consistently throughout your practice papers. All the important stuff is already stored into your long term memory.
If your exams are not evenly spread out and they come in clusters, then it can get a little complicated. What you need to do is focus on each cluster, in turn. For example, suppose you have a science, business and history exam on a particular week. There is a 4 day gap and you have maths, another science exam and geography the following week. A few days before, you would have to focus solely on the first cluster (science, business, history) until it’s over. Immediately after the history exam, you would revise for the second group; maths, science and geography in that order.
You may need to revise two subjects on the same day if the gap between those exams are too small or even worse, fall on the same day! There are certain subjects which do not require as much attention as others due to the nature of the exam. Depending on the exam boards, these subjects could be R.E, P.E (practical), Drama (practical), Art, Technology, Media Studies and I.C.T. Dedicate more time to core subjects such as maths, english and science because these are more important for your long term studies/career.
As you can see, it’s difficult to define the ideal revision schedule as one size doesn’t fit all; students have all kinds of exam timetables. However, what I highly recommended is that you download my guide: How To Maximise Your Grade In Every GCSE Exam. It’s a great resource to use in the weeks leading up to your final GCSE exams. On pages 17-18, you’ll find a very good example of what I’m discussing here. I’ve given a typical exam timetable which has a number of exams in quick succession. I explain how to approach them all so you can maximise your grade in every one. You just need to adapt it to your own personal schedule.
There are usually two papers in GCSE maths; a non-calculator paper and a calculator paper. Sometimes you may get more. For instance, the AQA 4360 spec has 3 papers and the OCR modular spec has more than 3 papers. For the sake of convenience, let’s assume you only have 2 papers. You may ask, “When do I stop revising for both papers and only concentrate on paper 1 as this is coming up first?”
Well, the general rule of thumb I use is the space between the first and second papers. Suppose the first paper is on a Wednesday and your second paper is on a Friday. The space between the two exams is simply 2 days. That means you should give yourself 2 clear days to revise for paper 1. On Monday of that particular week, you would stop any revision for paper 2 and concentrate solely on paper 1. You will continue to revise for paper 1 until your paper 1 exam is over. Then immediately after, you revise for paper 2. Revision before Monday is split evenly across both papers.
After the exams have took place, you’ll notice that the same amount of revision was dedicated to both papers. That’s the aim here because you want to maximise your result in both exams. Remember this is a general rule of thumb. You can approach each paper however way you like, just make sure that the same amount of time (approximately) is spent on each one.
For a more detailed analysis of approaching multiple exams in one go, see my GCSE Maths In Four Weeks Program.
Planning is important in any endeavour, let alone revising for your GCSE maths exam. Planning ensures that you complete all of the things you intend to do, by a set date. To achieve a top grade in GCSE maths, you must plan your revision in advance. You need to give yourself enough time to go through all the material before the exam. You do not want to enter the exam knowing (in the back of your mind) that you did not cover all of the material.
The best place to start is your resources. What resources do you have access to? Resources include revision books, online websites, worksheets, exam papers etc. Any material that is relevant to your exam. Gather as many past papers as you can because it is important that you complete as many as possible, especially in the run up to your exam.
Then, you will need to choose an appropriate resource to learn from. The size of the resource will depend on the timing of your exam. If your exam is in a couple of weeks time, you will need to choose a small resource; if you decide to revise online, you would search for ‘GCSE maths notes’. You would search for ‘notes’ because you need to refer to something concise. You cannot afford to read tonnes of information. If you want to revise from a textbook, choose one which is not too big. A large textbook, which is 300 pages long, is not wise.
I am a very efficient person so I tend to choose a reasonable-sized resource. I prefer to revise from a book because I don’t like to stare at a computer all day. I like to move freely when I am revising. I will not choose a textbook which is too big; for example 300 pages, because I find it difficult to read heaps of text. On the other hand, I would not choose a book which is too small because it may not be detailed enough to grasp all the content. Usually, I would revise from books which are around 100-150 pages long. I feel this is a good length to absorb all of the theory. Also, I like to go for textbooks that contain a batch of practise questions so I can test myself along the way.
The next thing to do is look at the topics. A quick way to do this is to view the contents page of your revision guide. Get a feel for the topics. How many pages are there in a single topic? Once you establish the number of topics, you can begin to draw-up a revision schedule. You need to compare the number of topics and exam papers with the number of days until your exam. For instance, suppose you had a revision guide which had 10 topics, a collection of 8 exam papers and your exam is in 10 days time. This is how I would structure my revision:
This is a small example but you should get the idea. Keep in mind that exam papers are very important. You should spend extra time on answering exam papers and checking if they’re correct. You want to perfect your exam technique so when you enter the exam-hall, you will be confident on what grade you will get. Those practise papers will give you a good indication on how you will perform in the real thing.
The important point to remember here is whatever plan you draw-up, make sure you stick to it! Don’t give up half-way through. Sometimes, you may draw-up a plan which is difficult to follow at the beginning. This is because you haven’t had much experience in planning before. If you feel that your plan is very unrealistic to begin with, then make some minor changes. Remember, it is all about trial and error. See what works best for you. Only you will truly know if you’re doing enough.
And don’t spend days planning your schedule. As long as you have a rough idea on what you’re going to do, that should be good enough. Do you see how brief the one is above? All you need is a brief list of things to do and just tick-off each thing at the end of day. Then, start over!
For a ready-made revision schedule, I’d highly recommend my GCSE Maths in 4 weeks program: www.passgcsemaths.com It will show you how to achieve your target in GCSE maths in the most efficient way possible.