Ebooks for download!

Hey there!

If you’re looking for some colored reference books, here’s a website I recently discovered that has links to plenty of great books, especially for Cambridge. Even so, Edexcel students might also use these for further reading. Hope it helps!

Namira

Edexcel IGCSE Biology

For Edexcel IGCSE Biology, I did the following:

  • Read the Edexcel book cover to cover, noting down all that is required according to the specification
  • I compiled material from other reference books and class notes and noted in the same copy mentioned above
  • Reference books I relied upon were Biology Matters, DG Mckean, Complete Biology, and Mary Jones. If I was confused with a topic, I made sure to read the same topic from various books to get a clearer idea.
  • I finished solving one whole question paper book.
  • I also looked at the Appendix which has suggested practical, and googled if I needed help with those practical, mentioned at the end of the specification.
  • To read my final O level notes, use this link.
  • For experiments, I found these notes very helpful, along with the Teacher Guide.
  • If you want a two-year, step-by-step guide to study igcse biology, use the Scheme of Work available here. You will also find a helpful document called Definitions of terms in practical questions.

General Guidelines on IGCSEs

Firstly, check how much time you have till your IGCSEs. Have you? Great.

If you have around 2 years left, go to the pearson edexcel igcse website.

Now go to the subject you chose to take, and download the specification. Move on to the Course Materials section, go to the Teaching and learning materials, and download the Scheme of Work and Teacher Guide. Remember, just because it says Teacher guide, doesn’t mean it can’t help you as a student! The Scheme of Work and Teacher Guide has a general outline of the topics you should study/cover in a week, and the extra details you might need to cover. Besides the obvious, the Specification lists a number of reference books, websites etc which might come in handy!

Now that you have all the Edexcel materials covered, you can move on to other sources of learning. Remember that although the Edexcel book may seem plain, uninteresting or uninformative, you won’t realise its true importance till your final year. What I am trying to say is, Edexcel books are cleverly crafted and require you to read between the lines.Reference books will surely aid you along the way to fill in those blanks. But right before your IGCSEs, make sure you read the Edexcel books cover to cover, every single line and even those pictures which you think are not important. Trust me, they are!

After you’re thoroughly done with a chapter (or at least you feel you are), try buying those chapterwise question papers for as many subjects you can find and doing atleast 5 questions from each. If you finish the whole chapter-related question paper, you’ll finally get the trend of the questions set. This is especially helpful for Chemistry, Physics, Maths and Pmaths.
For Maths and Pmaths, here in Bangladesh we have Unique Coaching question papers which are absolute life saviors. For Phys and Chem we have Momentum question papers. I haven’t found any for Biology or Econ.

Some good websites for most subjects in general (as in, question papers, markschemes, notes, revision guides etc) are:

Shawon Notes
Past Papers.net
NZKhan
BBC Bitesize
Bilal Ahmed Blog (has all the latest igcse papers)

Also, if you’re into using iOS/Android applications for learning, try Guru App for various IGCSE subjects, which has MCQs that you might want to practice when you don’t feel like studying.

Hello Edexcel IGCSE Examinees!

To tell you a bit about myself, I am Namira, a May 2015 candidate. I have always felt that school notes and textbooks were never enough. I scouted through the Web, I went to seniors and asked whether we need tutors at home. At the end of the day, I never really knew whom to trust, or what to believe. I never came across one thing that would answer me, is doing this going to be enough to get me those A*s?

Regardless of all that, I did eventually get past my IGCSEs, and hopefully, so will all of you, and with very good results, if I may add! To help you along the way, I decided to make a compilation of the materials which really did help me, or I found helpful, even if it were too late to study them.

In each blog post, I’ll add links and files relating to one IGCSE subject. I had eight IGCSE subjects, listed below:

  • English Language B
  • Bengali
  • Mathematics B
  • Further Pure Mathematics
  • Physics
  • Biology
  • Chemistry
  • Economics