A-Level Biology Week 2 Exam Preparation Tips

Welcome back! I bet you missed me, I’m here with yet another blog full of helpful tips.

I know, I know, revision, blah, blah, blah! But wait, today it isn’t just revision my friends. Today is about our notes!

Am I taking my notes down efficiently?

What I am doing to memorise them effectively?

What do I even do with them?

I was meant to be making notes?

What even are notes?

Fear not! I am here to answer those questions for you.

Flashcards, flashcards, and flashcards

Yes SpongeBob, yes you do. Honestly, it’s the best way to revise for Biology. Biology is a subject where you don’t need to be an essay master of linguistic techniques, you need to be able to express your ideas clearly and succinctly. Let’s face it, we all had enough of writing formally in GCSE English - like what compelled Shakespeare to make up all those words? The audacity. (Which isn’t a word he made up – I checked).

Last time I said we can answer an 8-mark question using ‘8 key-points’ and it’s the same for our notes. Let’s start memorising bullet points, not paragraphs. Trust me, it will make your life so much easier. Paragraphs TAKE AGES to memorise and it’s not necessary!

Alright, here’s the trick with flashcards, on one side you write the question, and on the other you write the answer in the most concise way possible. Remember the examiner’s comments I mentioned last time? We can use those to help with concise answers. The less information you have to memorise, the easier it will be to recall in the exam and write it down. You may be bulking in the gym, but here, it’s cutting season. So keep it concise.

For flashcards always use colour coding to organisation information. Some of you might not like writing by hand OR you are running out of time, and hey, I’m in the same boat as you! (I’m not procrastinating my Uni work to write this blog.....) Anki is a LIFESAVER. I wish I was exaggerating, but I’m not! The app is available on all platforms, including laptops. Sync your flashcards and rank them in order of difficulty based on how you study through the app and how quickly you can answer questions. This can be found here: click here. Now we are REALLY ready for the exam.

Cheat Sheets

I bet you gasped at the word ‘cheat’. Cheat sheets are IDEAL for lab-based questions, but they really come in handy for the smaller topics, which require less time to revise for. They are also really good for describing a process, like photosynthesis. Use cheat sheets wisely, though, you’re not trying to write your textbook.

Try making posters out of these and sticking them up around your room or house to glance over when passing by. Cover every walls if you have to. I did this and I may have been told off by my parents, but it was worth it... Cheat sheets will allow you to consolidate all the information into one sheet, which makes it quite handy and easy to organise too, like in a binder or folder.

For my tech bro’s, type it up and make sure you have a copy you can access on any device, then you can easily read through these while on the bus!

Traditional Notetaking

Hey, so one thing to be aware of, sometimes textbooks provide too much information. Shocking I know! So, what we need to do is see exactly what the exam board wants from us, this can easily be found in the subject specifications on the exam board website. Once you know what is going to come up in your exam, you can start writing your notes more accurately.

Remember STUDY SMARTER NOT HARDER!

Finally, try writing some notes by splitting your page in half and start writing your notes in the right column. Once you are done with the page and have filled it up, read them back and try to form questions for each paragraph or line.

For example, you have written notes on how blood circulates around the body. So, in the left column, you could write a question like “describe the process of blood flow through the circulatory system”. This will help prepare you those ‘out-of-the-blue’ questions you may encounter in the real exam.

And that's it for this blog folks! These are some of the best technique I’ve used and I really hope you will try them out for yourself. Stay tuned for even greater blogs in the future!

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 Syed. Syed will be hosting a series of Q&A webinars in the 2 weeks before final exams. Post your questions here, and Syed will answer them in these sessions.