Step Four

Accuracy and planning under time (AO2)

The marks that go with getting it right under pressure: planning before writing, checking your own work, and the common accuracy errors to catch.

Analyse, evaluate and develop ideas (AO1 R3)

Weighing the ideas and opinions in a text, judging how well they are supported, and developing a reasoned response of your own.

Reading for explicit meaning (AO1 R1)

Finding and selecting facts a text states outright — the retrieval skill AO1 rewards, and using your own words where the question asks.

How writers achieve effects (AO1 R4)

Analysing the writer's choices of word and structure, and explaining the effect of each on the reader — the heart of the higher reading marks.

Implicit meaning and attitude (AO1 R2)

Reading between the lines for what a writer implies and how they feel, and supporting each inference with a precise detail from the text.

Selecting and summarising for a purpose (AO1 R5)

Pulling out only the points a summary needs, putting them in your own words, and leaving out examples, opinion and repetition.

Descriptive composition (AO2)

Building a vivid description through precise word choice, the senses and a controlled focus, rather than telling the reader what to feel.

Directed writing: form, audience, purpose (AO2 W1-W3)

Writing a letter, article or speech that fits its form, addresses its audience and achieves its purpose, using the right register throughout.

Narrative composition (AO2)

Shaping a short story with a clear arc, a controlled viewpoint and a structure that does more than list events one after another.

Structure and paragraphing for effect (AO2)

Ordering a piece so the structure itself works on the reader — where to paragraph, how to open and close, and how sentence length controls pace.

Coordinate geometry: gradient, intercept and a line

Finding the gradient between two points, the equation of a line, the midpoint, and the length of a line segment.

Inequalities

Solving a linear inequality, showing the solution on a number line, and the one rule that is different from equations.

Reading and sketching graphs

What a graph's shape tells you, reading values off a curve, and telling a straight-line relationship from a curved one.

Rearranging a formula

Changing the subject of a formula by doing the same to both sides, in reverse order — and checking the new subject is alone.

Simultaneous equations

Two equations, two unknowns: solving by elimination, solving by reading a graph, and checking both equations hold.

Angle reasoning, with reasons

Interior and exterior angles of polygons, multi-step angle problems, and giving the reason for every step — the mark the exam is really testing.

Circles, arcs and sectors

Area and circumference of a circle, and the fraction of them an arc or sector takes — with the units the exam insists on.

Describing a transformation fully

Naming a reflection, rotation, translation or enlargement, and giving every detail a marker needs to reproduce it exactly.

Prisms and cylinders

Volume as cross-section times length, the volume of a cylinder, and keeping the units straight between area and volume.

Right-angled trigonometry

Labelling opposite, adjacent and hypotenuse, choosing sine, cosine or tangent, and finding a missing side or angle.

Vectors

Column vectors, adding and subtracting them, multiplying by a scalar, and what a vector means as a movement on a grid.

Bounds and accuracy

Upper and lower bounds of a rounded measurement, and why a length "5 cm to the nearest cm" is really a range.

Marking your own working

Reading a mark scheme, awarding method and answer marks, and using follow-through — the skill that turns a good student into an exam-ready one.

Percentages: change, reverse and interest

Percentage change with multipliers, working backwards to the original, and compound interest over several years.

What "show that" wants

The command words that decide how much working to write — Show that, Calculate, Explain, State — and what each one earns marks for.

Standard form

Writing very large and very small numbers as a × 10ⁿ, calculating with them, and reading the command word that tells you what to show.

Grouped data and estimated mean

Estimating the mean from a grouped frequency table using midpoints, and knowing why the answer is an estimate.

Scatter graphs and correlation

Plotting two variables, describing the correlation, drawing a line of best fit, and the trap of confusing correlation with cause.

Tree diagrams

Two events shown as branches: multiplying along a path, adding between paths, and reading the diagram correctly.

The circulatory system

How the heart and blood vessels transport blood, oxygen and nutrients around the body.

Coordination and response

How the nervous system detects stimuli and coordinates responses, including the reflex arc.

Diffusion and osmosis

How substances move into and out of cells down a concentration gradient — the basis of gas exchange and water balance.

Ecosystems and the carbon cycle

How energy flows through food chains and how carbon is recycled between living things and the air.

Enzymes

Biological catalysts that speed up reactions in living things, and how temperature and pH affect them.

Homeostasis

How the body keeps its internal conditions steady, using body temperature control as the key example.

Photosynthesis

How plants make glucose from carbon dioxide and water using light, and what limits the rate.

Respiration and gas exchange

How cells release energy from glucose, and how the lungs are built for efficient gas exchange.

Transport in plants

How water and food move through a plant, and how transpiration pulls water up from the roots.

Acids, bases and salts

The pH scale, how acids react with bases in neutralisation, and how salts are made.

The atmosphere and climate change

What the air is made of, how greenhouse gases trap heat, and the evidence linking them to warming.

Atomic structure

Protons, neutrons and electrons, and how atomic number and mass number describe an atom.

Chemical bonding

How atoms join by transferring or sharing electrons to form ionic and covalent bonds.

Electrolysis

Using electricity to break down ionic compounds, and why they must be molten or dissolved.

Metals and alloys

Typical properties of metals, why they conduct and bend, and how alloys are made stronger.

Organic chemistry: fuels and hydrocarbons

Hydrocarbons from crude oil, how they burn as fuels, and the difference between complete and incomplete combustion.

Rates of reaction

What controls how fast a chemical reaction goes, explained by how often particles collide.

The reactivity series

Ordering metals by how readily they react, and using it to predict displacement and extraction.

The mole and chemical formulae

Using relative masses and the mole to count particles and work out how much reacts.

Electric circuits and Ohm’s law

Voltage, current and resistance, and how Ohm’s law links them in a circuit.

The electromagnetic spectrum

The family of electromagnetic waves from radio to gamma, their order, and their uses and dangers.

Energy resources and efficiency

Renewable and non-renewable energy resources, and what it means for a device to be efficient.

Forces and Newton’s laws

How resultant force, mass and acceleration are linked, and what balanced and unbalanced forces do.

Speed, velocity and acceleration

Describing motion with speed, velocity and acceleration, and reading distance–time and speed–time graphs.

Pressure

How pressure depends on force and area, and how it acts in solids, liquids and gases.

Radioactivity

How unstable atomic nuclei give out radiation, the three types, and what half-life means.

Thermal energy transfer

The three ways heat moves — conduction, convection and radiation — and how to reduce heat loss.

Waves

Describing waves with frequency, wavelength and speed, and the difference between transverse and longitudinal waves.

Work, power and energy

How a force does work, how energy is transferred and conserved, and what power measures.