You're Revising WRONG! Practice does NOT make Perfect | Top 7 GCSE Maths Mistakes

Part 1 of 7 in our series "Top 7 Mistakes which GCSE Maths students make".

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Invest three minutes of your time now to avoid heartbreak on Results Day!

For those of you in Year 11, or with children in that same year, you'll be acutely aware that GCSE exam season is little more than six weeks away now! The Easter holidays, during which you might have done lots of revision - or conversely, none at all (I won't tell if you don't) - are fast drawing to a close.

Of course, one subject which almost every Year 11 student in the UK will sit in a couple of months is Maths! Your teachers and tutors alike will have been harking on about "exam technique" for weeks, if not months by now, and they'll continue to do so until exam day arrives.

Have you ever stopped to think about your "revision technique" as well, though? Are you spending your precious time wisely? Are you revising effectively? Failing to do so is the first of our TOP 7 Mistakes which GCSE Maths students make.

So, why not take a break from churning through practice questions - part of the revision process though that may be - to check that you're building good habits and making every minute of your revision count!

This blog series by Gill Learning highlights seven common GCSE Maths mistakes and HOW to resolve them before the day of your exam rolls around! And whichever exam board your school or academic institution opts for, these common mistakes will apply to yours. Maths doesn't have favourites! So, read on to find out how a P.E. lesson in winter 2009 inspired part one of this blog series...

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Back when I was in Year 7, my P.E. teacher said something that has stuck with me ever since (Mr. F, if you're reading, hello!). And you might be surprised to know that it applies just as much to Maths, or indeed to any school subject, as it does to sport. At the end of the lesson, with us all huddled around, he said "Remember everyone: practice makes…?", and he paused, waiting for us all to finish his sentence. "Perfect!" we cried. "No," said Mr. F disappointedly, but yet at the same time smugly shaking his head. "Practice makes PERMANENT," he reiterated. "If you practise bad habits - if you practise doing something poorly, or altogether wrong - then all you'll engrain is a muscle memory for failure!" I'm paraphrasing a little bit - it was over 14 years ago, after all - but the core message resonated with me so loudly that I've never forgotten what he said.

In other words, he meant don't practise something just for practice's sake. Long hours of training, or study, will amount to nothing if you don't consolidate whatever skill you wish to hone in the right way. First, you must develop the right technique, good habits, and clear thinking; only then should you turn to practice, repeating that good technique over-and-over, to hone it, refine it, and transfer it to your long-term memory.

How does this apply to GCSE Maths? Well, let's take past paper practice as one pillar. Almost everyone in Year 11 who reads this article will have been doing past papers as homework and for revision, but too many won't be getting maximum bang-for-mathematical-buck out of their precious time spent revising.

Once you've finished a paper (or part of one), check your answers and your workings - not just the answers alone - against a mark scheme. If you got a question wrong, don't fret! But always be sure to repeat that question, this time with the correct approach and method. Because that's the practice that'll make what you read on the mark scheme permanent in your mind. Otherwise, all you'll have done is practise the question wrong, read some random numbers off a mark scheme, glumly concluded that you were wrong, and carried on with your life. Well, in that case, you might as well have saved your time and not bothered having attempted the question at all! Your time and energy are valuable; don't do half-a-job, redo the questions you get wrong again, but next time right!

For that matter, sometimes the best approach is to do past papers "open book". If you get to a question that stumps you, and after a few minutes of trying to fathom a solution you're still stuck, then don't just give up and do half-a-job. Use the endless resources at your disposal ("hello, Internet") to work it out; sometimes, that means more than just reading the mark scheme, which contains only the bare minimum of workings necessary for an examiner to award your solution credit. The act of diagnosing your misunderstanding, doing some digging, and eventually getting a solution is not only great revision, but is also what I'd consider to be organic, actual "learning". A great life skill outside of Maths and outside of school altogether!

If all that fails and you're still stumped, well then you could always try booking a tutorial with us here at Gill Learning. Haha! That leads me nicely onto my final gem of advice for today: ad hoc tutorials are perfectly legitimate; you don't always have to commit to tuition for the long-term.

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That's all for now, folks; join me again tomorrow for part two in this blog series. By the end of the week, you'll be ready to demolish your Maths exams!