Why you will not do well in your GCSEs and A-Levels
We’re getting dangerously close to study leave and for many of you this year the stakes will have changed. Many of your will be your GCSEs whilst others will be wading through the proverbial ocean that is sixth form or college, and let me guess. . . you want to do well, extremely well, and you’ve came here looking for how you would go about doing that. Below I’ve listed some areas that if not managed properly will prevent you from getting the best grade.
From my experience as a student and tutor, you’re ability to do well be based on both the quality of your resources and how well you learn them linked by the bridge of how well you spend your time.
Now I’m going to assume you attend, all of your classes and you have great teachers, I will always advocate you attend your classes as more times than not, not attending them means you’re probably wasting time this article is going to focus more on what you can do when you’re not at school or college, and is supposed to go hand in hand with attending school or college.
Resources
Before you build anything from ikea, you need the all the parts, you need the raw materials to assemble all the parts together. Just like your ikea wardrobe you need all the ‘bits’ to be able construct an excellent academic year. Resources are very very important at both A-Level and GCSE.
Along with your lessons you need access to the correct textbooks, lessons are great but you will spend a lot more time using textbooks to learn the material so it’s very important you have the right textbooks for all of your subjects.
Now there can be different textbooks produced by different companies, normally your exam board will produce a textbook for it’s own specification, I would normally recommend these text books but there can be some other really good alternatives.
Things to look out for when selecting a textbook,
Does it cover topics in the required depth?
How closely is it aligned with the specification?
Does it have lots of practice questions and exam-style questions?
How good are the diagrams?
Is it endorsed or written by the exam board?
Is this what you need to know for your exam?
I’ve compiled a list of recommended textbooks here for both GCSE and A-Level subjects, these are a guide for what I think are the best textbooks for each subject but you are free to buy what you think the best is for you. This list is being updated all the time.
Past papers
YOU NEED ACCESS TO PAST PAPERS!!!!!
This is a bit more difficult for GCSE students as this is the first year that the new specification is going to be examined, however there are specimen questions, and other practice exam material that will be helpful to you. Take your time and use them effectively, I discuss how to this later in the article. You can insert your marks into your megalist and track your progress, and evaluate where you need to make changes.
Revision guides
Revision guides can be very helpful for two main reasons,
- They summarise content (make it easier to understand)
- They often have practice and exam questions.
You should not use revision guides in the place of your textbooks, they should be used WITH your textbooks, there is normally not enough depth in them for you to get the top grade with that alone.
Learning Technique
One of the reasons you will not do well this year is by not learning the content effectively for your style of learning
You can have the greatest resources in the world but you will still not do very well if you’re able to learn any of it.
So this year you’re going to need to develop your learning technique.
Ask yourself these questions.
Do I understand the work in the first place? And if yes how am I going to remember it and be able to apply it?
If you don’t understand it, have you gone home and covered the topic in the text book?
Try to really identify what exactly it is you don’t understand don’t say vague things like “All of it” Write down exactly what you don’t understand and then approach your teacher with your questions he/she will be impressed that you’ve made the effort to try and solve this yourself and be more likely to help you.
You may need to adopt a good note taking method such as the Cornell method (article coming up).You may also need to do practice question after practice question. If you’re doing a humanities subject, it would help to practice multiple essays every week.
Time management
Learning techniques of relevant resources are great, but you have to give yourself enough time to learn and process, this is where most students fail and lets face it at GCSE and especially A-Level specifications are quite heavy, for most students this will be why they do not achieved the best grades, let’s explore why
Lack of consistency
Not having a productive routine is why most students don’t do well, you need to be in a position where you are regularly going over content covered in class and in textbooks.
A schedule & megalist will help remedy this, this can be quite difficult to follow sometimes but a good routine is a major key, most students don’t achieve their potential not because they don’t understand or don’t have the ability to do the necessary work but because they lack the discipline to be regularly go over their work and cover it in enough detail to be able to answer questions in at the standard required.
Discipline doesn’t have to be an inherent trait it is something that can be improved with practice,practice and more practice.
Underestimate of time
Leading on from that students often underestimate how long it takes to learn adequately and or complete assignments like coursework. It may take you longer to get a concept or complete a task, especially at the beginning the more you invest in your studies the faster you learn and the faster tasks are completed.
This will also be the case when using past papers, you need to be able to answer all the questions to the relevant standard in the time given and this will take time, you want to cover every single past paper you have, however you don’t want to do them too early when you haven’t covered the material but also you need to do it enough time before your exams that you can learn from them and use them as revision resources.
A good idea will be to do them regularly after the content has been covered and increase the number you do the closer you get to exams, and to eventually do them under time conditions this will give the most accurate representation of where you are and how exam ready you are.
Also it’s very important to understand the difference between recognising something and knowing something inside out for example you can recognise someone’s face having seen them before but that doesn’t mean you know their name or where you know them from and many students make the mistake of thinking that just because they recognise an equation or something sounds familiar you will answer correctly in an exam this is not necessarily true and it’s only by revision and answering practice and exam questions that you’ll be able to tell the difference between recognising something and knowing something.
Coursework also believe it or not can also waste a lot of time, students always put off coursework and it becomes a burden, and ends up robbing students of their revision time, you want to get coursework assignments done as soon as you can so you can receive feedback and make corrections, you want your teacher to look at your coursework as many times as is possible so you can get as much direction as possible, also teachers are much less willing to look at coursework from students close to the deadline. Do yourself a favour and get it done early so you have good marks in the bank before you go into the exam.
Relationships
Getting towards the end of school, relationships may become even more appealing, in these important exam years it’s advisable not to get distracted (Don’t play yourself!), because the chances are it probably won’t last (just keeping it 100), and if it is true love it will be there after, you get excellent grades, you won’t get this time back (ever) so make wise decisions.
Michelle Obama makes some very interesting observations when asked about dating in school she said:
‘There is No Boy Cute Enough or Interesting Enough to Stop You From Getting Your Education, If I had worried about who liked me and who thought I was cute when I was your age, I wouldn’t be married to the president of the United States’.
And I think she is absolutely right you want to be in a position where you can choose and decide the path you want to take and who you want to be with, this works for boys and girls( Don’t play yourself!)
This list is in no way exhaustive and there are many things that I have left out let me know in the comments if I should do a part 2?
I’ve attached the companion Youtube video to this post below enjoy!
Why you will not do well in your GCSEs & A-Levels
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