Here’s some advice from S5/6 students who faced the same worries you have:

ADVICE ON STUDYING FROM STUDENTS DOING HIGHERS ETC

My advice: continuous working throughout the year. Don’t try and do too much at once, but keep a steady pace and increase your workload at prelim and exam time. Do your homework *when* you get it, as it leaves you with a lot of time for revision, and homework is actually there to assist your learning! This really does help! Also, know your learning outcomes inside out and prepare for all eventualities (particularly in english, where essays titles can be unpredictable). Familiarise yourself with the sorts of questions they ask in the final exam.

Highers aren’t as bad as people make them out to be, but they are a noticeable step up from SG. This means that you can expect to sacrifice quite a few nights out if you want to do well. However, it’s important to give yourself some time off as well.

(Not to toot my own horn, but this was the way I approached my higher year, and ended up with 6As (5 at band 1) there’s a method to sitting highers, once you figure it out it’s not too hard)

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I started revising for prelims after the Xmas holidays in both S5 and S6, and invariably wished I’d started before.   Keep your work organised throughout the year. Geography especially – nice big folder with sections for each unit full of clear ordered notes, so that if you need to look up case studies on migration or the formation of a limestone pavement, you’ll be able to lay your hands on a sheet with everything you need instantly. Write down in a separate place important things that are likely to be useful for exams – any formula you need to remember, important definitions for computing, etc. Know your texts inside out for English and practice timed essays on them. Also, pick something you’ve read and that you like for your SSL. So many of my class were still reading books they weren’t interested in when we worked towards it. I studied one of my favourite books, and actually really enjoyed the unit (If you’re really stuck on what to do, read some good books over the holidays) Take advantage of all the resources you have available to you – any revision classes offered, you may wish to buy past papers or revision books, online notes, websites like this.

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English; Trust me, you’re going to be writing enough essays on your literature throughout the year not to need to revise the play/book/poetry itself except a re-read or two near prelim/exam time. I can’t help very much on the essay technique – I write in my spare time, so unsurprisingly that helped One thing my teacher really liked was when I started an essay with a linked-but-not-directly-relevant-quote. But that might just have been her… The thing you may have to spend more time on is the close-reading which also counts for 50% of the mark. (although my school decided to ignore this & not do ANY classwork on it) For that, reading newspaper articles weekly is helpful, highlighting interesting language use… hopefully you’ll be taught what this in class.

Oh! for the personal study NAB you’ll have to read & study a book yourself, so I recommend something you enjoy & is considered a ‘classic’, as there are more resources available that way. You could start on that now if you were keen…

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Hmmm, tips… the thing that springs to mind was a (rather empathetically made) reminder my english teacher gave just before the exam, along the lines of;

“What the examiners are looking for is literary analysis – just quoting something isn’t good enough! Explain and develop and comment on it for A grades… *rants on similar vein for half an hour*”

Which I interpreted as ‘make a quote, analyse said quote, then expand to relate it to the essay topic’. And that worked pretty well

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revise continually id say. give urself a break in june tho, but do all ur hw and maybe do some revision before u go back in august. keep going to school up to the last day! (well as long as u know ur teachers will def be teaching anyway). even if u dont have a test coming up, revise something ur unsure of, ull feel good about urself and ull be a step ahead! when u find out u have a test work out a study plan. the way i did it was if i had say 20 pages of notes to learn in 10 days id learn two pages a night and break it up like that, up to u how u do it tho.

have an organised set of notes for every subject. if ur teacher doesnt give u any get some from the net/books.

stay motivated, its only a year out ur life and its def worth all the hard work. plan a day off every so often to give urself a break. have a goal- getting into a particular course/uni and whenever u feel urself flagging think about tht and how fab it would be. i desperately wanted to do medicine and that desire kept me going all thro fifth year.

i would say tho that if u dont work and then get rubbish prelim marks then that is TOO LATE to start working. a friend of mine wanted five As, got rubbish prelim marks, worked hard but still fell far below her target.

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