Science GCSE revision guide + ADHD, please help!

[WinterCarlisle]

Hi

I’ve put this in chat as I thought it would get the most traffic. I have a bright but stressed son doing his GCSEs this year. He has AuDHD and does take meds for this. He also has all the reasonable adjustments for the exams.

He works hard but does have challenges with focus. He wants to do science A levels so it’s really important he does well. The school has supplied the CGP revision guides but OMG they are AWFUL for his ADHD brain! The pages are so busy with pointless stupid jokes. He needs a much more “traditionally academic / calm” approach like I had 100 years ago at school but obviously very much geared to the syllabus (edexcel). He prefers text books to online although he does use BBC Bitesize and Save My Exams as adjuncts.

Does anyone have any suggestions, please? (And apologies if anyone wrote / edited the CGP books! Maybe it would get you a promotion if you suggested a “quiet” version a bit like cinemas offer quiet screenings).

I have ADHD as well and just did a big professional course that required a forensic knowledge of a very long text book / manual: if it had looked anything like my poor son’s revision guide I’d have never coped.

Many thanks and Happy New Year

I know what you mean re: CGP books. Can you look online for ‘knowledge organisers’ - you can buy them for some subjects / exam boards, and you can also find free-to-download ones from various websites. Essentially the ‘knowledge organiser’ just distils everything right down to its simplest most concise form, which can be really helpful. He may need to go back to lengthier guides / texts for certain parts though.

And in terms of GCSE maths, I can really recommend the Corbett Maths flash cards, they are visually very ‘clean’, with a single concept on the front, then qr codes on the back to a video explanation, practice questions, and answers.

How my dc used them was to go through them and sort them into three piles - those he knew well, those he sort of understood, and those he didn’t really understand, then you work on each card, and move it up to the next category, until you end up with all cards in the ‘know it well’ category.

I really really wish those sorts of cards were available for gcse sciences as well…!

I can highly recommend the keycards app for sciences: www.keycardsrevision.co.uk/

My SEN DS finds them very structured and methodical.

Agree the CGP books are very frenetic in layout and not easy to work through!

Not a book, but i found this guy extremely helpful during my time at uni, when I'd forgotton a few gcse concepts, the videos are condensed really well

https://m.youtube.com/@Freesciencelessons/featured

I can also recommend Seneca learning which is free plus BBC bite size. Perhaps think of science as 3 separate but very different subjects though. The biology is often better supported by videos whereas the physics is more mathematical so lots of written questions with calculations might be better. The exam board itself will have lots of student resources and past papers to work through with answers.

Physics and Maths Tutor’s ‘detailed
notes’ are much less busy than the CGP books.

for example:

https://pmt.physicsandmathstutor.com/download/Biology/GCSE/Notes/Edexcel/2-Cells-and-Control/Detailed%20Notes.pdf

The best thing by miles for my DS was the Cognito website. It takes them through all of the syllabus/questions/videos. We paid for a few months subscription but think you can also do free access. He found that must easier to navigate than Seneca and was a million times better than books or flashcards.

And the absolute best thing is once they have done some decent revision is to do lots of past papers and to mark them themselves (so they learn what they did wrong) - there is lots of repetition in the question styles.

Thank you all SO much! I wasn’t expecting so many replies with such useful information. I’m really glad I’m not the only one to think this about CGP. I have a science background and can help him to an extent but honestly I thought my eyeballs were going to start bleeding when I looked at the CGP book.

I was helping him with revision strategies and showed him what I did with my giant manual - he said he wished the CGP book looked similar as he could focus on my one whereas the CGP book was just insane 🤦🏽‍♀️

@Frlrlrubert THIS!!! This is EXACTLY what he needs. Thank you!

Happy to have helped, they have exam questions (with answers) broken down by topic as well.

I find most students (especially with ADHD) find they prefer to work with ‘chunks’ rather than the whole subject. Obviously working up to full past papers is the aim, but for checking understanding of a revised section, those topic specific exam questions are really useful.

@Frlrlrubert - yes I agree with the breaking the subject down. It’s just hugely overwhelming otherwise. He loves science and is naturally good at it - he’d like to do something neuroscience-y as a career. But obviously he needs the GCSEs grades first and they are just so challenging - so many subjects at the wrong stage of life for so many children, especially ND ones.

Thank you loads for your help 😊

Great ideas on here as we need them too