A Levels

Resources I used:

An app I used called Flora, helped me quite a lot. Flora not only aids in focus, it also helps with tracking progress.

The thing with Flora was that I would set a time and during that time a flower or a plant or tree would grow, producing a little garden. With Flora I also could connect with a friend and study together.

Most importantly Flora is also a charity. It aids in growing trees and helping the environment. “We partner with tree-planting organisations in Africa and East Asia, such as the Trees for the Future, to plant fast-growing soil rebuilding trees, fruit trees that diversify nutrition, and trees that can provide forage and fuel-wood. All these trees help make the earth greener and provide long-term financial aid to families who need it most.” By using this app and using the donate button, you may aid others, which I really like about Flora. When focusing and growing that tree, when donating, real trees are planted and the money is used to an amazing cause.

Other resources I used mainly came from the internet. Websites from other colleges as well as obvious ones such as Simply Psychology or Tutor 2 u.

Other resources I used

I used websites, solely to take knowledge from. Using these websites helped me with the structure of my essays as well as getting extra evaluations or points to include. Since some textbooks do not provide a great amount of things you can take away from them like those extra evaluation points, it was worth going online and trying to find some.

Useful websites for Psychology:

Psychology Wizard helped me with studies and gave really well presented information such as AO1 (Descriptive Points) and AO3 (Evaluation Points), I highly recommend this.

Study Rocket This was another website similar to Simply Psychology, which gave me just wider AO3 points. In some topics, I really struggled with AO1 points, so looking at this website cleared up the information which I needed and I employed such into my work.

Get Revising is one of the best websites I used when I needed extra clarification. The website provided me with PowerPoints, Flashcards and other resources which where super helpful. The website even provides MindMaps which I sometimes used when looking for additional AO1 description as well as AO3 evaluation.

Useful Websites for Sociology:

Revise Sociology was my go to website. This website is overall amazing for knowledge as well as exam practice, there are exemplar essays and short answers provided which really help with structure and trying to include stronger points.

I used StuDocu for one of my essays which was worth 20 marks. The essays there are really helpful as I read the whole essay and took things away from it and applied some of the points into my own work. By doing so I expanded my resources and the way in which I wrote, reading others’ essays helped me to see what the structure as well as the points should be.

Regarding to the strategies which I used, Quizlet offers numerous flashcards. With these after creating my cheat sheet, I would make my own flashcards. Due to Quizlet being an app, it made it easier to make the cards because all I had to do was type them. As well as this, I looked at other people’s flashcards which they have created, this also helped me to see how I could make my own and use them for other topics.

The Hectic Teacher – Another great website, almost the same as Revise Sociology, aided me in formulating my notes as well as exam practice. From this website I took knowledge organisers, these were really helpful in retaining information from previous lessons. The blank organisers allowed me to put the information into my own words which helped me to understand the content more.

Strategies:

One very useful strategy I used was writing a mock perfect essay. Without the pressure of timed conditions, I sat down and wrote a full mark essay on each sub-topic for Sociology and Psychology. This allowed greater memory retention of the points and evaluation chronologically – this I felt was better than attempting to memorise notes. Furthermore, writing an essay outside time constraints allowed me to pick the strongest points. (give some for psychology or sociology) Regarding this, it helps connect what I know and notes into a test-like scenario.

Following up from the mock perfect essay, writing a cheat sheet of points in chronological order was another strategy which I used. By writing the key researcher’s name, points , evaluation and conclusion in a concise manner it helps improve my retention of the researcher and their key ideas. Doing so was important as they were crucial in gaining marks.

After creating the concise cheat sheet, I made flash cards. These were made on the basis of the cheat sheet, featuring all of the key things which had to be remembered. The flash cards provided cues for me also known as little triggers. The information was easily retained as the flash cards consisted of words or phrases rather than sentences or paragraphs.

By using these three strategies for long essays, I was able to quickly and sufficiently remember the key ideas and the people which were relevant to the sub-topic.

The link above is a perfect mock essay which I typed up in preparation for my exam. Although the essay being long, the idea behind this was to ensure that I had multiple feminists and critics of such branch. As a result of such I was able to retain more than just two sociologists or just one criticism. Therefore, I was able to produce a structured essay with multiple sociologists and evaluation points in a finer structure. The essay has flow as well as connection from one point to another which is crucial when writing a long answer.

Below is an upload of the summarised cheat sheet which I used for this specific essay.

After writing out my cheat sheet which summarised all of the content I wanted to write in my essay, I decided to make paper flash cards as well as Quizlet Flashcards. The luxury of Quizlet was that it was on my phone which made it easier to revise when I did not want to take my paper flashcards everywhere. Whilst revising, editing was much more easier with Quizlet, which i did often, just to change words around in order to retain the information more.