Week 3 of 6 — halfway there
Halfway through The Home Straight. Keep on keeping on.
The Easter break is almost done, which means the final stretch begins in earnest from Monday. If that feels daunting, remember: you are not walking into this on your own. Your teachers have been preparing you for these exams all year, and that work doesn't stop now - lessons, one-to-one support, and extra revision sessions are all there for you. Use them. That's what they're for.
Work through this week's subjects, and go into next week ready.
For parents and carers: make sure your child knows about any extra revision sessions running in school over the coming weeks - and that they're going. That time is too valuable to miss.
This week’s focus
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📚 English
This week's focus is Poetry - specifically the poems you find hardest.
There are 18 poems in the anthology. You should know what each one is about, its key images and central ideas, and be able to recall context. Prioritise any you haven't revised yet or don't feel confident on.
✅ Revise using your quotations and context booklet — three key quotes and three contextual points per poem. Use it to make flash cards, mind maps, or whatever revision format works for you. (An electronic version has also been shared with you.)
✅ Watch the GCSEPod 'Pods' for the poems you're least sure of, then test yourself with the 'check and challenge' quizzes.
✅ Download this example question on ‘To Autumn’. Practise by writing three CED paragraphs (Comment, Evidence, Development) on a single poem — or plan a response to the 40-minute comparison question using the example.
❓ Test Me Tips — for parents and carersTake the quotations and context booklet and pick a poem at random. Read your child the title and ask them to tell you: what's it about, one image or idea they remember, and one piece of context. Then check the booklet. You don't need to know any of the poems yourself - you're just asking the questions and listening for the answers.
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✅ Work through all the sections for Paper 3 in your personalised Pinpoint booklet.
Access help online by searching for the topic within SPARX, MathsGenie or CorbettMaths.
✅ Keep up the past paper practice - via MathsGenie or in school. "A mark a minute", split into two chunks of 40. You know the drill by now.
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This week's focus is Physics and Biology.
Physics Focus: Circuits
✅ Core Knowledge Revisit: Learn all P1 Energy questions from your Physics Paper 1 Core Knowledge Book
✅ Core Knowledge Revise: Learn all P2 Electricity questions from your Physics Paper 1 Core Knowledge Book
✅ Revision Videos: Watch the Circuits Introduction, Series Circuits and Parallel Circuits videos — pause often and build mind maps from memory.
✅ Complete questions on these topics on SPARX
Biology Focus: The Heart, Blood and Respiration
✅ Core Knowledge Revisit: Revisit B2 Organisation from your Biology Paper 1 Core Knowledge Book
✅ Core Knowledge Revise: Learn all B4 Bioenergetics Core Knowledge questions
✅ Revision Videos: Watch The Circulatory System, The Heart, The Blood, and Aerobic and Anaerobic Respiration videos — pause often and build mind maps from memory.
✅ Complete questions on these topics on SPARX
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✅ Part One: Speaking practice Your speaking exam is coming up soon. This week, practise your conversation answers without looking at your prepared notes. You should be able to handle a range of questions now, so get someone at home to ask you the questions and listen to your answers. The more you do this out loud, the more natural it will feel on the day.
✅ Part Two: Roleplay and Photo Description Rewatch the speaking 'how-to' videos on Teams and practise preparing Roleplay and Photo Description tasks. Confidence here comes from repetition; the more familiar the format feels, the less you have to think about it in the exam.
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This week's focus is The Normans.
✅ Step One: Use your Revision Guide to make notes on your areas of weakness in this unit - particularly the Feudal system, laws and the court system, government, towns and villages, Lanfranc's reforms, and education.
✅ Step Two: Use the chart of past questions at the front of your revision guide to create bullet point plans for your answers.
❓Test Me Tips - for parents and carers: Use pages 16–25 of the Test Me booklet to check your child's understanding. Read the questions, listen to the answers.
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This week's focus is Paper 1 case studies - and the technique is as important as the content.
✅ Work through each of your Paper 1 case studies using this method:
15 minutes reading about one case study using your knowledge organiser and exercise book
5-minute break
10 minutes writing down from memory the key facts you can recall
Repeat for each case study: Nepal, L'Aquila, Cyclone Idai, Beast from the East, pond ecosystem, Amazon Rainforest.
This read / break / recall approach is one of the most effective revision techniques going — the effort of remembering is what makes it stick.
Technique of the week
⏱️ The Pomodoro Technique
If revision feels overwhelming to start, the problem is often not the work itself - it's the open-endedness of it. Sitting down to "do some revision" with no defined end point is exhausting before you've even begun. The Pomodoro Technique fixes that.
How it works:
Set a timer for 25 minutes. Work on one thing — just one — until it goes off. Then take a five-minute break. That's one Pomodoro. After four of them, take a longer break of 20–30 minutes.
That's it. The point is that 25 minutes is short enough to feel manageable and long enough to actually get something done. The timer creates a boundary, and the break is guilt-free because you've earned it.
How to do it well:
Put your phone in another room for the 25 minutes, or at minimum, face down with notifications off. A Pomodoro that gets interrupted by messages doesn't count. There are free timer apps designed specifically for this or a plain kitchen timer works just as well. In fact, that’s why its named Pomodoro - Italian for tomato - its named after a kitchen timer shaped like one.
Don't try to finish a topic in one Pomodoro. Just work on it for 25 minutes, then pick it up again next time.
Tip for parents: if your child says they don't know how to start, suggest one Pomodoro. Not an evening of revision — just 25 minutes on one subject. That's usually enough to break the inertia.
This week's resource: Search 'Pomodoro timer' in your browser for a free online version — no app needed. Study with me is an aesthetic version we love, with a choice of themes. Pomofocus.io is a simple clean version.
A reminder that your teachers are already supporting your revision in school — these emails are designed to complement that work, not replace it. If anything here raises questions, please ask your subject teacher.
The next email lands next Friday.
