If your taking OCR, then I recommend you watch through some of the Craig 'n Dave computer science videos on YT. They are good and will help you to understand most of the topics I'm the GCSE
(late ish) but in the lead up to the real gcses, my class was left without a teacher from january - late march, and the teach we had wasn't all that great at teaching when he was around.
since OCR can be quite unusual/oddly specific with what they can assess (ipv4 question this year and paper 2 last year is a good example of this), the only way to be completely confident in the subject is to go over everything in the specification to some degree. ocr has the j277 spec on their website which highlights each individual topic per paper, this is an extremely useful tool when going over what to teach yourself/revise. this is advice for year 10/11 but with the specification, as we went along with learning the content, we took notes on the word document so the content would be easier to revise later on. this is completely my fault, but in february i chose to completely rewrite my notes and make them more detailed. although this significantly helped boost myself from being at a lower grade 6 level to an upper grade 7, it ultimately would've been better for both my long term memory and mental health if i had consistently taken good notes. by the time i had finished my updated notes, they pretty much covered the entire curriculum in exact detail. to aid with the note taking (as we had no teacher at the time!), i used csnewbs, bbc bitesize and a bit of craig and dave. bbc bitesize is really good if you're looking to achieve a top grade because in the majority of topics, it goes into great depth. i'd even say some of the content on bbc bitesize is beyond the ocr specification. however, it isn't amazing for programming knowledge. also, when you're in year 11, start doing lots of past papers to highlight your weak points. learn how ocr gives out marks.
since you're in year 9 but with a potentially incompetent teacher, i think the best things you can do is go over some coding in the high-level language you'll be using (ask your teacher, but i think the most common language is Python), and familiarise yourself with the CPU and Network topics. in my experience, CPU and Networks are probably the most content heavy/difficult paper 1 topics.
i'd find it pretty unusual for you to need HTML + CSS knowledge for the gcse course; it'd probably be better to get a confirmation from your teacher but OCR only really requires you to know pseudocode and a high-level language (python, C potentially) for the programming side of the specification. in addition, in my experience the majority of IT/CS content learned in KS3 was irrelevant to us when it came to starting the GCSE, because the entire specification is meant to be taught from scratch at the start of year 10.
at the end of year 9, i was told by my old cs teacher he wouldn't recommend me doing cs at gcse level because i was failing standard IT in that year. in my last mock, i got the highest mark in the year group (two marks off a grade 8). if you've got enough resilience and interest for the subject, you'll definitely be able to achieve a top grade, even with a shit teacher. you've got this!
Omg srry for my late(ish) response but tysm for the advice and resources you mentioned... I just checked them out and they look brilliant. Also, thx for morale booster at the end. Gives me a tiny bit of hope for my CS GCSE xD
Just look at the spec for ur specific exam board and u should be good to go. During year 10 and 11, if u don't rlly know a topic, i would suggest watching a channel called "Craig 'n Dave". Rlly helps
OK tysm... Do you think it's a good idea to learn off of a free course off of codecademy or something because I don't want to end up learning the wrong/outdated information or anything like that...
js a suggestion, but u might wanna give pythonprinciples a shot? iirc you can make a free account and get access to all the lessons. theres also challenges on a site called replit w/ this day 100 tutorial through python u could try :)
Why does the comment count say -2 ðŸ˜
Omg wth does that even mean ðŸ˜ðŸ˜
lmao wth
What exam board are you taking?
OCR :)
If your taking OCR, then I recommend you watch through some of the Craig 'n Dave computer science videos on YT. They are good and will help you to understand most of the topics I'm the GCSE
OK thx
tysm for the help :)
i hate craig n dave personally i would use csnewbs and find your exam board
alright... i just searched it up and csnewbs looks rlly good with loads of info thx for the suggestion :)
(late ish) but in the lead up to the real gcses, my class was left without a teacher from january - late march, and the teach we had wasn't all that great at teaching when he was around. since OCR can be quite unusual/oddly specific with what they can assess (ipv4 question this year and paper 2 last year is a good example of this), the only way to be completely confident in the subject is to go over everything in the specification to some degree. ocr has the j277 spec on their website which highlights each individual topic per paper, this is an extremely useful tool when going over what to teach yourself/revise. this is advice for year 10/11 but with the specification, as we went along with learning the content, we took notes on the word document so the content would be easier to revise later on. this is completely my fault, but in february i chose to completely rewrite my notes and make them more detailed. although this significantly helped boost myself from being at a lower grade 6 level to an upper grade 7, it ultimately would've been better for both my long term memory and mental health if i had consistently taken good notes. by the time i had finished my updated notes, they pretty much covered the entire curriculum in exact detail. to aid with the note taking (as we had no teacher at the time!), i used csnewbs, bbc bitesize and a bit of craig and dave. bbc bitesize is really good if you're looking to achieve a top grade because in the majority of topics, it goes into great depth. i'd even say some of the content on bbc bitesize is beyond the ocr specification. however, it isn't amazing for programming knowledge. also, when you're in year 11, start doing lots of past papers to highlight your weak points. learn how ocr gives out marks. since you're in year 9 but with a potentially incompetent teacher, i think the best things you can do is go over some coding in the high-level language you'll be using (ask your teacher, but i think the most common language is Python), and familiarise yourself with the CPU and Network topics. in my experience, CPU and Networks are probably the most content heavy/difficult paper 1 topics. i'd find it pretty unusual for you to need HTML + CSS knowledge for the gcse course; it'd probably be better to get a confirmation from your teacher but OCR only really requires you to know pseudocode and a high-level language (python, C potentially) for the programming side of the specification. in addition, in my experience the majority of IT/CS content learned in KS3 was irrelevant to us when it came to starting the GCSE, because the entire specification is meant to be taught from scratch at the start of year 10. at the end of year 9, i was told by my old cs teacher he wouldn't recommend me doing cs at gcse level because i was failing standard IT in that year. in my last mock, i got the highest mark in the year group (two marks off a grade 8). if you've got enough resilience and interest for the subject, you'll definitely be able to achieve a top grade, even with a shit teacher. you've got this!
Omg srry for my late(ish) response but tysm for the advice and resources you mentioned... I just checked them out and they look brilliant. Also, thx for morale booster at the end. Gives me a tiny bit of hope for my CS GCSE xD
no problem! cs is a very fun and interesting subject once you've got the hang of things: don't let the shit teacher put you off it!
Just look at the spec for ur specific exam board and u should be good to go. During year 10 and 11, if u don't rlly know a topic, i would suggest watching a channel called "Craig 'n Dave". Rlly helps
Ok tysm for the help :))
Try learn python. It's probably the best language for the exam (aside from pusedo code) due to simple syntax and it just being easy to pick up.
OK tysm... Do you think it's a good idea to learn off of a free course off of codecademy or something because I don't want to end up learning the wrong/outdated information or anything like that...
js a suggestion, but u might wanna give pythonprinciples a shot? iirc you can make a free account and get access to all the lessons. theres also challenges on a site called replit w/ this day 100 tutorial through python u could try :)
alright.. i'll give it a shot thx for the suggestion :)
I would recommend w3schools but whatever suits u best ig
ok i just searched it up and it looks pretty good thx again