10 Weeks to Go!

How are you getting on with your revision plan?  Hopefully by now you are well into a routine, and everyday you are ticking off more subject content on your list.  I want to share with you something that is quite amazing:

Get marks on your Science paper without knowing any Science!

What?  Have I gone mad? Not in the slightest!  While I am of course encouraging and enabling your learning of Science through my courses, you can actually get a decent number of marks on a Science paper without knowing any Science.  You need to look carefully at past papers.  In particular, look for questions that include tables of data or graphs.

I’m looking at a paper right now, and in particular I’m focusing on a question about Ecology.  The first part of the question provides you with a picture of insects in a petri dish, and you are asked to complete a data table simply by looking at the picture – a very easy two marks.   The next question asks you to draw a bar chart of the data – this is worth another five marks!

The final ‘data’ part of the question asks you for a comparison of two sets of data on the bar chart.  This couldn’t be easier, and it’s worth three more marks.  So, in total, if you answer all the data marks in this question (out of 17) you could have scored a relatively easy ten marks – without applying any Science knowledge!  Isn’t that amazing!

It’s worth having a look at past papers just to see how many times questions involving data pop up.  With a little careful thought and application (but no Science knowledge!) you should be able to accumulate some very valuable marks!

There’s lots to learn from a careful analysis of previous questions, and in my next post I’ll be delving a little deeper into the wonderful world of past papers.