Before you start your revision it is important that you have a topic list that you can work through to make sure that you cover the whole course. If you don’t have a topic list, you can download the specification for your course (a document that explains what the exam board expects you to have learnt).

If you are in any doubt over which exam you are going to take ask your teacher!

Then you should take some time to go through your notes and review the learning objectives again, indicating for each topic whether you:

• Are reasonably confident about the topic
• Understand the basic ideas but need to revise the details
• Can’t remember anything about the topic or have never understood it!

It is important that you are honest with yourself when you do this. You will need to seek help with topics that fall into the third category, and go back to the textbook and review those in the second category. This process will help you prioritise your revision for trial papers or the GCSE exam itself.

For lots more support for your GCSE revision, try visiting our partner sites below:

Here are some more ideas to help with your revision:

• Log onto your school VLE (virtual learning environment) and explore the revision resources available for each topic
• Use interactive revision sites such as Love Biology, GCSE bitesize or S-Cool
• Create mind maps to cover each topic - the more colourful the better!
• Learn keywords using flashcards - here is a link to the the Love Biology flashcards on Quizlet
• Try and explain topics to a friend or family members
• Summarise each topic onto two sides of an index card
• Download revision tools onto your phone or tablet
• Do lots of practice questions and look at marking schemes

...and here are links to the specifications from the main exam boards:

• OCR Gateway Science
• OCR 21st Century Science
• AQA GCSE Biology (4401)
• AQA GCSE Science A
• AQA GCSE Science B
• AQA GCSE Additional Science
• AQA GCSE Further Additional Science
• Edexcel Individual Sciences
• Edexcel Mixed Sciences
• Edexcel IGCSE
• Cambridge International Examinations (CIE) IGCSE
• WJEC Biology