Exam Skills
There are a lot of marks for skills.
- Mapwork
- Graphs
- Photographs
- Tables of figures
If you can do this sort of stuff well you can get the marks easily. What do marks make? Grades!
This is all about doing simple things well. By "well" I mean accurately and quickly. Not taking too long, not making silly mistakes, not losing marks.
So, read the advice and download the guides. Make sure you get these marks.
Equipment
A lot of the skills marks can be gained so much more easily if you're equipped properly. You need to have with you:
- Pens - black or blue;
- Pencils - not too sharp;
- Ruler - 30cm out of preference;
- Rubber
- Calculator - you might need it and you have to have it for Maths and Science anyway, so bring it to your Geography exams too.
- A few coloured pencils might be useful - for graphs
Can't be bothered to get this stuff together? Trust me - you're losing marks. But then, if you can't be bothered you deserve to lose the marks anyway. Loser.
Mapwork
This is all about practice. You can get mapwork questions at school, although I'll try and add a few here soon. Mapwork is all about confidence and accuracy, and you get both of those through practice. Be quick, be accurate, make sure you're equipped.
Pay particular attention to distance and six figure grid references. These are the things people get wrong more often than not. And always remember that there are 3 ways of measuring height on a map: contour lines; spot heights and triangulation pillars.
Download the Ordnance Survey mapwork guide to help you remember the key points
There are a variety of mapwork revision resources in the Geography revision area on the LHS Web Portal
(the VLE). You'll need to log in and go to the geography area to get them
Photographs
Harder than you think! Using photos well is quite a skill. It's worth taking a little time to read the guide here - don't assume that you're great at using photos. Lots of really good candidates don't get good marks on this area.
Download the Using Photographs guide to sharpen up your photo use skills (temporarily unavailable for size limits...)
Graph Drawing
So simple, yet so many people throw marks away on this. It's really all about accuracy.
Download the Graph Skills guide to make sure you can cope with the details of graph drawing
Tables of Data
You get data in a table. You have to use it. Easy yes? Oh yes, dead easy - but so very easy to make a mistake and look really, really stupid. Trust me - I've seen thousands of exam papers that do it.
Take your time and double check. It's not hard to do.
Take a look at the population sample question for a good example of the sort of question you need to be able to deal with.