It's half term! Which means, for many of you, mocks are looming over. So that begs
the question of why should you bother with mocks and how should you prepare
yourself for them? First of all mocks are your best opportunity to test out
whether or not your revision strategies are working. You can see how efficient
they are and whether, in fact, you need to change the whole lot because it's okay
at this stage to completely start revising in an entirely different way.
And that's great. They give you an understanding of how the real exams will
be. I know that my school even brought in external invigilators for our mocks.
And this helped to give us that same sense of fear, and we got a chance to
learn how to cope with that fear so in the real exams we didn't freak out in
the same way. In fact, I found mocks to be more scary than the actual exams - proof
that they can really help you. They're also an excellent opportunity to assess
yourself and learn where your weaknesses are. For instance, I got a grade 7 in my
history mock. I was three marks off an eight and very annoyed with myself
because, if I had finished the exam paper, I would have probably got those three
marks, and got the eight. That taught me that I needed to learn how to write
faster, and how to think faster so that I didn't run out of time in the actual
exam. Which is something I managed to do - not run out of time in the actual exam -
and that got me a grade 9 in the end, which I was very pleased with. So it's a
great opportunity to learn where your weaknesses are and work out a way to
improve. Finally, mocks are there to prepare you for the real exams. If you do
take them seriously, they will seriously help you. See what
I did there? This begs the question of how do you prepare yourself for your mocks?
'Cause chances are, you have no idea what you're doing when it comes to revision
yet, unless you're one of those amazingly efficient people who has been revising
since the start of year 10, which I certainly wasn't. The first thing is to
take them seriously, as I said before. I don't mean by this, freak out because
your final grades are dependent on this and you can't get to the college you
want if you don't get the right grades. I simply mean you should be revising by
now, and you should take your revision seriously. If these were the real exams,
you would have been revising for ages by now. So get revising.
However, experiment with the revision because you can. It doesn't matter if you
completely abolish the way you've been revising and just try a new method. Start
from scratch again because you can. There's no pressure on
these exam and the grades you get don't really matter. Maybe you want to try
flashcards, perhaps you prefer those flashcards online, or maybe you prefer
those flashcards to be physical. Maybe you want to do mind maps or maybe,
perhaps, you even want to start your own revision channel and start making your
own revision videos. After all, this is how my channel started, as preparation
for my mocks last year. This is a great chance to see what works and what
doesn't. But, there are a few things I think you should bear in mind when
revising. The first is that when learning your content you need to use active recall,
which is testing yourself. Otherwise, you won't really remember. It will be going
in one ear and out the other. Secondly, you need to make sure you
understand what's going on. There's no use revising something that you don't
understand. It just doesn't work. And finally, you need to practice your exam
technique. Practice questions are amazing. They may seem like a bore, but they will
seriously help you in the long run. Finally, put your mental health and
yourself first. Yes, mocks are important and they will help you get good grades
but even if you fail all your GCSE exams in the summer it's not the end of the
world. It doesn't mean you're going to be doomed to live in a trash can. With
enough determination, anyone can do anything
no matter whether or not they got the right GCSE grades first time. And I believe,
that's all I have to say. So, remember, take those mocks seriously, and use them
as a great chance to experiment with, and learn how to, revise. Thanks for
watching, don't forget to Like subscribe and tell all your friends. If you have
any questions, feel free to leave them in the comments and I will make sure to
answer them. And if you're someone older, and you perhaps want to leave a
little bit of advice for people - you think there's something I missed - then go
for that, as well because it's good to help each other.
Wesað ġē hāle.