Study Tips to Help You Score a 9 in Maths
LikeMany people think that maths is a subject which you either 'get' or you don't. However, these GCSE revision tips will show you that this doesn't have to be the case.
1. Understand the content
With some GCSE subjects it's possible to just memorise everything you are taught, copy it down in the exam and come away with a good grade. However, with maths, the focus of the exam is on applying your knowledge. It's therefore important that you understand why you are doing what you are when you answer a maths question. When your teacher goes through an example question, ask yourself at every stage of their working, "why did they do that?" and ask them if you don't know. If you still don't understand, it can help to have it explained by someone else differently.
2. Exam questions
The best way to improve at maths is by doing as much practice as possible. Once you've learnt the content, the next step towards a grade 9 is exam technique. Doing as many past exam questions as you can find will help you figure out what the exam board wants you to write, as there are a lot of marks available for showing your working as well as just getting the right answer. The most important part of doing practice questions is to review your work afterwards, since if you don't fully understand where you went wrong, it's not going to help you improve. For each question you got wrong, you should look at the mark scheme, and try to find some worked solutions online. Then figure out the reason for your mistake and set a target to decide what you're going to do to fix it. For example, if there was a gap in your knowledge you could go over the content using one of the resources in section 4, then practice questions on that topic until you get the hang of it. If it was a 'silly mistake' such as misreading the question or even your own handwriting, then you could set a target to always check over your work, or make the layout neater so it's easier to spot errors.
3. Don't be put off if a question looks unfamiliar
Almost every year there is a GCSE maths question which has most candidates stumped. This isn't because they don't know the maths required to solve the question, but because they can't see how to apply their knowledge in the right way. An example from a few years ago was the last question on the 2022 Pearson (Edexcel) paper 1:
When you see a question like this, it might not immediately be clear how to get to the answer. However it's important to remember that you're not going to be tested on anything you haven't been taught, and these kinds of questions are designed to be solvable with a bit of careful thinking. Unfortunately, there's no 'one size fits all' approach to these questions, but there are a few general strategies you can try in the exam:
- Write down all of the important information that's given to you in the question. In this case, you could annotate the diagram with the lengths AB and BC.
- Do the question in small steps; you don't have to know how to finish the solution in order to start it. You could think about what other information it might be useful to know, and what you can work out from the information given (e.g. the area of each circle). You might be able to pick up a few marks for your method even if you don't have a full solution.
- You could also think about what you've been taught which could relate to the question. For example in this situation you might think about whether there are any circle theorems you could use, or anything else you know about circles.
- Practice doing tricky questions. Although it may seem like there are millions of questions you could get asked, many of them follow similar patterns which you can learn to recognise with enough practice. The last resource listed in section 4 is helpful for practising these kinds of questions.
4. Useful resources
There are many free resources online which are designed to support GCSE students revising for exams. Here are a few examples which I've found to be very useful:
- Physics and Maths Tutor - this website contains revision notes, worksheets, exam questions by topic and past exam papers. It is very useful for going over your weaker topics and practising exam questions.
- StudyMaths - similar to Physics and Maths Tutor, this website provides free maths worksheets, revision notes, practice questions and more to help you prepare for your GCSE exams
- Seneca learning - Seneca have many free, online courses to choose from, including foundation and higher GCSE maths, each of which consist of notes, videos and quizzes on each topic.
- Spicy Maths Questions by 1st Class Maths - this is a collection of 50 challenging maths problems aimed at GCSE students. Once you're comfortable with more typical exam questions, these are a good way to get more practice with the 'grade 9' style questions.
However, online resources sometimes aren't the same as having a teacher go through the content, so if you'd like some extra help preparing for your exams, you can find private maths tutors.