09/09/2016
GETTING ORGANISED!
It's the start of a new school year so start as you mean to go on, particularly if you have just started GCSE courses or made the jump up to Year 12 for your first year of A Levels. Getting organised from the start can make life so much easier and stop things piling up, getting muddled or overwhelming you. Better to get organised from the start than spend your first two days of study leave or a weekend trying to sort through a pile of disjointed, mixed up and confusing notes.
Shopping list:
CALCULATOR!! The most irritating thing when I taught full time was 'but we don't have maths today so I left my calculator at home' or 'but the maths department just give us calculators' 'I can just use my phone' etc etc. Whether you are doing GCSE or A Level, you WILL need a calculator for Chemistry. Fact. Just keep it in your bag as you would a pen. You will not be able to use your phone in an exam so you may as well get used to a proper scientific calculator now, and for the longer calculations you are likely to come across in Year 11 and A Level a phone calculator is unlikely to be as useful.
BASIC AND NOT SO BASIC STATIONARY: Everyone should at least have a pen, though this seems to be more and more of a surprise to students every year! In addition, you will at times need to draw or interpret a graph so a pencil, rubber and ruler also handy. Highlighters and colourful pens are also great to have, how many will depend on you as a person and how likely you are to use them. You will find that I use a lot of colour in explanations that I post, and when it comes to things like chemical bonding, electrolysis and many more, colours can really help you keep track of what moves where.
RINGBINDERS: At both GCSE and A Level stages these are handy, though particularly for A Levels. For GCSE try having one per subject at home that you can store any lose sheets in, label them with the date so you can cross reference them back to the work in your book that goes with them, and keep them organised by topic using file dividers. If you do a worksheet in class that gets stuck into your book and marked, try grabbing a spare copy too that you can put in the file and then have a go at again as part of your revision down the line. You can then mark it using the one you marked (and corrected) in class. At A Level you want to have one file that you take to school with you, and then at the end of each topic transfer your notes into a ring binder at home. I would resist transferring them until the end of a topic, you never know when you are going to need to refer back. Look at the contents page of your text book at the start of the year and see how many chapters there are; this will tell you how many file dividers you will need.
DIARY: Many of you will have a school journal that you are used to and that is fine. There are so many different types of planners and diaries out there that suit different style of people, but essentially you need to be using one to make sure that all deadlines are in there, and you are dedicating enough time to each subject. If you like, try colour coding tasks you have to do with what subject they are for, or highlight the most important deadlines eg coursework, or allocate how much time you think each task will take you so you can plan your time. Whatever works for you and make sure you leave enough time to relax and keep your sanity. I have worked with many students in my time, just planning out their week or month and see how to fit everything in to make it less overwhelming and breaking huge overwhelming tasks down into manageable chunks. If this is something you think you would like help with then send me a message.
FLASHCARDS: Start building up a bank of revision flashcards as you go. You could use them for definitions, diagrams, equations, anything you like really but if you build it up as you go along then that takes out a very time consuming task at the start of your study leave.
REVISION GUIDE: Don't just wait until revision time or study leave to get these. Use them all the way through the course to add to your notes, consolidate what you have learned, or as a different way of explaining something you may still be confused about. I have always used the CGP ones, both as a student and as a teacher, I wouldn't be without them and can highly recommend them for both GCSE and A Level. Chemguide.co.uk is also an excellent resource for A Level.
Have I missed anything? If you think I have feel free to leave a comment :) I hope that this helps, and that you have a brilliant year ahead!
Katy x
PS Apologies for any typing errors/mistakes - writing has never been my strong point and this is a little out of my comfort zone but I'm trying! I'm right proper good at explaining Chemistry though honest!
