Hi All,

My DD is in year 10 and we have just started building our - so to say, arsenal, for the interesting GCSE jouney ahead.

Her board is OCR for Sciences.

We have the OCR Gateway GCSEs text books. But going through few of the topics covered in her class, the explainations are quite basic.

Wondering if you can point me in the correct directions when it comes to resources to understand topics.

When I am looking into books available, I am either getting revision notes or workbooks.

The YouTube channels also don't seem to cover the Higher Tier explainations.

The Bitesize seems to be just touching on the topic rather than giving a deeper understanding.

Hi Surreyav,

DD has had this problem repeatedly. At first I thought the answer was to go back and see what was covered previously in KS3 even, assuming there was more detail then and GCSE notes just summarised it. Finally I got the A Level texts which actually explained in more detail. This may not be approved by teachers. However DD found the GCSE level explanation frustratingly simplistic and was wasting time trying to get at what it all meant.
I think as long as DD knows the correct GCSE exam responses the deeper level understanding can’t hurt.

HTH
PS

Edited for clarification

My daughter found this website useful -https://www.my-gcsescience.com
She felt it covered everything up to the highest levels. You can print off sheets which are a skeleton of the presentation and use it to take notes on, and then there are exam questions and answers for each topic. She achieved 9s in all three sciences and feels that this website was an important part of that. Her school also started using it nearer the exams, but she felt it was useful to have it for the whole year before the exams

Presumably, either you or your DD have explained to her subject teachers that she feels she needs a more in-depth explanation to fully get to grips with topics than they are currently providing? Does the school offer anything like lunchtime 'clinics' that she could attend, or the chance to make appointments to see teachers on a '121' basis?

Has she asked her friends what resources they find particularly helpful?

_________________
Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.Groucho Marx

Sorry OP, I was assuming your problem was that your DD understood the concepts being introduced but needed to know more detail. For example DD’s textbook says “adaptations may be structural, behavioural or functional” but does not elaborate, which is why the A-level text was useful. The topic was covered in lockdown so getting more in class was problematic.
We tried DD on My-Gcsescience.com in year 9 but she didn’t take to it. She may be more favourably inclined now, so we’ll give it another go. (Thanks 2childmum for the reminder).
Unfortunately DD is extremely reluctant to give up a lunch break to go to a science clinic, and I find when she wants an answer she wants it NOW. For that reason we prefer to have resources on hand rather than rely on the school’s science clinic.

My gcse science was the best website for my DD.
Science with Hazel for my DS.
Both go to grade 9 level.

Thank your all for your recommendations and suggestions. I have taken. a note of all.

PerpetualStudent - I did ask DD if they have a science clinic. She is currently not aware. Possibly because of Covid it has not been advertised this year in school or paused.
Would you be able to help in names of the A level resources which helped your DD ?
Her worst is Chemistry especially the ionic chemical equations so far.

2childmum and Moon unit - thank you for the lead on my gcse science website. I know I had stumbled on it before but it carries more weight if a parent has recommended it.

ToadMum - I shall ask her to reach out to her teachers more often. It might be Covid that the clinics are paused, but I have encouraged her to find out if there is an alternative.

DD has just finished chemistry A live - it is very different to the GCSE, especially the information about bonding. Both my DCs did chemistry A level at different schools and both were told to basically forget what they had been told at GCSE because it was a simplified model which works for GCSE level questions, but at A level it is obviously covered at more depth, and is applied to more complicated scenarios DD is now at uni studying chemistry and once again the model being used is more complex ( which is what you would expect)

So I think you need to be careful if you start looking at A level chemistry texts in order to answer GCSE questions - I think it will just confuse the issue. Better to have a good grasp of the model used at GCSE in order to be able to answer those questions.

Just for a bit of fun - this is a great video explaining ionic, covalent and metallic bonding - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljvX-RMv_lw

DD also tackled understanding this by drawing circles for each shell around the nucleus and used counters for the electrons which she then moved around to form the bonds, depending on which type of bond it was.

I have photos but no way to attach them here ( I don't think)

Please see Faq 4 for information on posting photos.

I don't have an on-line account to upload it to so that won't work! But thank you for the information