Exam Skills Lessons

These 7 lessons are designed to teach students key skills they will need to complete science GCSE
exams. All examples (apart from a very small amount) are real exam questions or use real exam
tables and graphs.

Slides with blue headings are for information and students to take notes if you wish. Slides with
orange headers are questions and activities for students to complete.

Not all lessons will last a full hour and others may be slightly too long. You know your classes best so
use your judgement.

Lessons DO NOT need to be taught in order, but it would help to do lesson 1 first.

Lesson 1 - Variables

This lesson teaches students independent, dependent and control variables and more importantly
how to identify them from tables, graphs and text in exams.

It also covers continuous and categoric variables and which types of graph should be plotted.

Lesson 2 - Conclusions

This lesson teaches students to write conclusions from graphs and tables of data, what it means if
data is directly proportional and the difference between describe and explain questions

Lesson 3 – Comparing and Evaluating

This lessons teaches students what to do if they come across the command words compare or
evaluate and not just to restate the information in the question

Lesson 4 – Graphs

This lesson focuses on how to plot graphs, how accurate students must be, drawing lines of best fit
and dealing with anomalies.

Lesson 5 – Means, Significant Figures and Standard Form

This lesson reminds students of the need for certain mathematical skills in all science (not just
physics equations). It covers how to calculate means and check you’re right, taking anomalies into
account and how to use standard form and significant figures.

Lesson 6 – Writing Methods

This lesson teaches students how much detail is needed if they are asked to write a method and the
need to describe the use of the apparatus.

Lesson 7 – Keywords

This lesson teaches students about common misuse of scientific keywords. For example, when they
say something would be more accurate when they mean precise.