How to Start a Study Group for IGCSE Exams (And Actually Make It Work!)

IGCSE revision. No one likes it, but it’s a necessary evil if you want to do well in your IGCSE exams. How can you give yourself the best chance of success? One of the common study techniques for IGCSE is to form a group and study together. 

If you’re interested in forming an IGCSE study group in Kenya that actually helps you prepare for your exams, here’s what you need to do. 

How to Start an IGCSE Study Group in Kenya 

Study groups are pretty informal, but they do still take some planning and know-how to get going. Here are 4 tips to help you set up a Kenyan IGCSE study group that actually works:

1. Invite motivated students 

The quickest way to kill a study group is to bring in a bunch of people who aren’t very interested in studying. If you’re serious about doing well in your IGCSE exams, you want to study with people who are similarly serious. 

Stick to around 3-5 people in your group. Any more than this can be too difficult to manage. 

2. Set clear goals and expectations

A study group shouldn’t have the broad goal of just “studying”. What are you studying, and for what purpose? Whether you’re looking to get A*s in chemistry or prepare for your whole October/November exam set, having a defined goal is important. 

Goals will help you set expectations for how much material you’ll be going over and what kind of progress you need to make over time. 

3. Schedule consistent meetings 

When and where will you meet? This can be based on the schedules of the group members, but it needs to be decided on very early on. Set a schedule and make it work. 

Proper study groups need to meet regularly and consistently. If you keep canceling the meetup or bailing, people will stop coming. Even if it’s difficult to get everyone to show up every time, consistency matters. Show up and keep it going. 

4. Decide on group roles 

You don’t need to be super formal, but it helps to have some roles laid out in your group. Roles like notetaker, timer, group leader, or other functional roles. Instead of keeping people in the same roles forever, you can rotate roles to keep things fresh, as long as you know what needs to be done. 

What Should an IGCSE Study Group Do?

So, you’ve gathered a group of motivated students together with a goal and a little bit of structure. Now what? 

Here are the things you can do to prepare for your IGCSEs together. 

Past Papers

All IGCSE courses have past papers. Past papers are exams from previous years, with the answers included separately. Although questions are not reused in exams, so you won’t get an insight into the exam questions you’ll be getting, they do help you get familiar with the types of questions in the exams and the way material is applied. 

Past papers are a valuable resource for students, and they’re usually available for free! Cambridge IGCSE has more past papers available than Edexcel, but you can find resources for both.

For Cambridge past papers, you can often find topical papers or classified past papers. These are past papers organized by related subjects, topics, or question types. This is a great way to improve in weak areas without using too much time on topics you already excel in.

Doing past papers as a study group helps you all to compare notes and improve your results together. Where you might struggle, another group member may be able to fill in the gaps, and vice versa. Past papers are a great way to see how your revising is going and to find out where you may still need more work. 

Revising

The obvious part of a study group is working on revising together. What does group revision look like? Instead of sitting around all reading your notes individually, focus on revising in a way that adds to everyone’s understanding simultaneously. 

Here are a few ideas on how to revise in an IGCSE study group:

1. Teaching topics 

One concrete way to improve your understanding of a topic is to teach others. To help you all learn, divide topics among the group and have each person teach their topics to the group. Do this with smaller topics to help vary your revisions and cover more material. 

2. Pop quizzing 

Everyone loves a good pop quiz! Okay, maybe “loves” is the wrong word there, but pop quizzes are actually a great way to quickly test your understanding. You can do pop quizzes by taking turns asking each other questions about a topic you’ve just revised. 

3. Sharing notes 

You’re all taking the same subject, but you may have different ways of taking notes. The whole group could benefit from comparing and sharing notes on the topics you’re revising. This way, you’ll all get a slightly different perspective that adds together to make a fuller picture. 

Practice Exams 

The ultimate in exam prep is practice exams. As an IGCSE study group, the best way to do practice exams is to time yourselves completing the tests and use your performance as a gauge for what you need to work on.

Don’t focus exclusively on practice exams. Instead, do these at set increments and use them as milestones in your exam prep. Time your practice exams to help you prepare for your IGCSEs in Kenya without frying your brain too close to exam time. 

The Best Study Groups Are Those That Exist

At the end of the day, the study group that’s going to be most effective is the one that meets regularly and stays active. As long as you’re doing something that’s helping you prepare for exams and you’re holding each other accountable in your studies, you’re doing it right. 

Make a point to stay consistent and work together as a group. This way, you’ll all get something good out of it.