A Level Advice
So I took Geography, Physics and Spanish A Levels so my advice will be based on the experience of
those 3 subjects, but I have also included some more general tips which can apply to any subject.
General
Firstly, use the day folder method. I think this is quite well known as I found this
tip from Youtube and a lot of my friends used it. This is where you have one
small-ish folder divided into your 3 or 4 subjects and you put all your work in
there. You also have 3 or 4 large ring binder folders at home and each time you
finish a topic at school, you take all the work you have on that topic out of your
day folder and put it into the bigger folder for that subject.
Further to this, date every single piece of paper you use. Whether that's your usual lined paper or a
handout you get in class, this will make sorting your work when you go to put it in your bigger folder
much easier.
Secondly, I would highly recommend using an app called Toggl. It is essentially a glorified
stopwatch which you can use to time how long you spend on certain tasks e.g.
flashcards, past papers, writing up notes. You can set "projects" as your subjects and
colour code them (for me Geography = green, Physics = Blue, Spanish = Yellow), then
you can give a name to what you actually did during your study session e.g. Coasts
Flashcards, A Level Physics 2017 Paper 1, Exercises About the Future Tense. I find that
using this can particularly make you feel good when you look that you've actually spent 4
hours on one topic. Obviously the aim isn't to revise for as long as a possible, but to do
quality revision, but it can still be a little bit of a boost to see how much time you have put
into certain things.
The main use I found for Toggl was much closer to my exam dates. I never came up with a proper
revision table because a) I knew I would spend too long trying to make it look aesthetic and b) I didn't
know what topics I would actually want to prioritise until much closer to the exam when I was doing all
of the past papers. Therefore I used Toggl to make a revision schedule, but only for the next day,
because that way I would very actively know what I want to get done e.g. I did a past paper today but
struggled on Electromagnetic Induction, so I want to do some revision and practice questions on that
as soon as possible, and I know I want to do some flashcards about Urban Environmental Issues
because I just realised I don't actually know a lot about it. To plan out my day, I would block out time
to do each task e.g. 9:00-9:30 Spanish Flashcards, 9:30-10:00 Urban Environmental Issues
Flashcards, 10:15-11:45 Electromagnetic Induction Old Specification Questions, but I would make
, sure that they are not attached to a project so that they are coloured grey, and then when I am
actually doing the tasks, I will use the stopwatch like normal and have it attached to a project so it is
coloured. That way I can see my plan and real time taken for my tasks side by side. I might see that
Urban Environmental Issues Flashcards only took me from 9:30-9:50 so I can choose to have a
longer break, or spend a bit longer on Electromagnetic Induction Questions. Usually, I would end up
spending too long on certain tasks so I wouldn't finish all my tasks, but it set up a very firm framework
around which I can plan my day.
These next General tips are all about past papers.
First of all, print out all the most recent past papers. A lot of the
specifications you will be using were updated around 2015/16 so the first
exams and therefore the first past papers in the new specification will be
about 2017/18. If you only do the A Level, don't forget that you can also
use the AS papers. You don't have to be as strict on these in terms of
timing as they tend to differ to the A Level papers, but they will provide
useful extra questions.
Print out all of these papers and keep them in a large ring binder folder per subject. Although you can
just look at the paper online and write down your answers on a piece of lined paper, it makes it
difficult to draw on diagrams (mainly for STEM) and it will be difficult to go over them later when
you've forgotten what the question was. Printing them out will allow you to do the paper (almost)
exactly how it will be in the exam and give you a better feel for how the actual paper is structured. I
would even advise to do this for most essay-based subjects. I usually want to annotate the essay
prompt before I start writing, but I always think, if I spend time writing out the prompt in order to
annotate it, I will get advanced time to think about and plan the question which I wouldn't get in the
actual exam.
On top of this, I think if you can see a pile of past papers sat on your desk, you are more likely to do
them than if you *know* that they are somewhere online. It also feels quite good to watch the
"finished" pile of exam papers stack up.
Remember if you're printing out the papers at school to try and do so early. My school had a credit
system so you couldn't print out loads of stuff at once, but because I decided to print out all my past
papers almost at the same time, I used up my credits quite quickly so had to ask a friend to print
some things out for me. I believe the credits at my school reset every half term, so I should have
timed when I printed everything out better. It is good to be aware of any limitations on your school's
printing system.
When you're doing your past papers, it is a good idea to keep track of the grades
you are getting and also to know which papers you have already done. That's
where I used Google Sheets to help. I know spreadsheets can be slightly
daunting, but honestly learning how to use them will really help you out in the
future. I have a link here
(https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18z7U6_iLUkSw-CpwHDCcw-
2FDkTJViT8oYFWVnuGwss/edit?usp=sharing) to an example that you can base
your checklist on.
