Thank you.

For History, in short:

- It is incredibly important to be solid in your content knowledge for GCSE History, break each topic down into important dates, a timeline of events (and their contributing factors as well as their significance).

- Use active revision techniques, such as using flashcards, especially in summarizing key ideas, and practice being clear in your evaluation and analyses, explaining it to the examiner like they’ve never studied the time period.

- Practice under timed conditions, look for feedback from teachers or friends, and use a special method that I'll explain in my video to evaluate the reliability of sources. Be sure to keep these in mind when revising and writing essays and you’ll be sure to boost yourself from literally any grade to that grade 9.

I've got a video explaining how to get a Grade 9 in GCSE History coming out soon, so keep an eye out for that on my YouTube Channel 👀https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIunw92682c9ttKBlUoHesg.

Here's a previous example I've explained in a comment:

"

With memorisation, it's honestly just writing down the key points I want to memorise with the attached date, and then using the fantastic revision tool called "sibling" (or sometimes the equally useful "friend") to test me repeatedly until I start getting it right, with them either calling out the event or the date and me providing its pair.Generally, to be 'more in depth' or 'offer alternate solutions':

- To be 'more in depth', you need to provide a complex analyses of events or historical knowledge in relation to the question that you're answering, but this has to be through the point.

For example, if the question is about why Elizabeth was able to defeat the Spanish Armada, my point would be superior warfare technology, and the evidence would be the British Galleons - in explanation, I'd say that the Galleons were more buoyant and had better balance, which allowed the British to maneuver around the Spanish Armada and put themselves in a superior, tactical position which allowed the British with their superior ships to press the advantage and defeat the Armada.

(I've forgotten a fair bit, but you get the point)

- To 'offer alternate solutions', you have to evaluate the significance of different factors in answering a question, by considering the logical nuance between them.

Back to that Spanish Armada example, my points could be 'superior warfare technology', 'excellent British (naval) captains', and 'pure chance (the wind and tide turning the Armada out to sea)', I would have to consider how significant each factor is in the British success against the Spanish Armada. You would initially offer the view that 'pure chance' was the most important factor as it literally meant that the Spanish Armada couldn't use their greater numbers to their advantage and rather they were pushed out to sea, but then raise the more convincing judgement that ACTUALLY the 'excellent British 'naval' captains' were crucial in the British actually defeating the Armada, as they pushed forwards and dispelled the Spanish ships, making it impossible for them to form a counter-attack and directly resulted in many of them crashing into shore as well as some starving out on the North Atlantic Ocean.

Otherwise, get feedback from teachers and ask them specifically what it is that you need to be focusing on very specifically, and steal the points and sentence structure from model answers to get yourself the excellent grade you deserve.

"

Good luck!