Revision on

With GCSE exams due to start in less than two months, it's time for students to start knuckling down to some serious revision.

But with the plethora of distractions available in the average home, many otherwise conscientious students find it all too easy to turn study time into leisure time. It can be hard to ignore the lure of the home computer and stick to that revision timetable.

Fortunately, however, there are some brilliant educational websites online that will help students consolidate all that they have learned over the last two years and may hold their attention longer than a textbook.

With great material ranging from explanatory PowerPoint presentations, worksheets, lesson plans, animations, interactive quizzes and games to help bring a topic to life, teachers planning revision programmes may find these websites handy too.

Some online revision time should be an important part of any student's timetable, so we've rounded up the best revision websites with close links to GCSE syllabus requirements to help students make the grade.

Maths
Maths isn't the most popular of subjects but the web can make use of the wonderful graphical capabilities of a computer to explain concepts in a visual way that can be much easier to understand than learning from a textbook.

A particularly good maths revision website is Pearson Education's GCSE Higher Mathematics. The site has been designed to supplement a published scheme but can be used on its own, and includes a question and answer facility and worksheets.

There is a good section on using and creating spreadsheets, which includes downloadable examples and advice on using the mathematical functions in Excel spreadsheets.

Maths Revision Net at is also well worth a visit. The site is organised into subject headings under the main topics of number, shape and space, statistics and probability, graphs, algebra and trigonometry.

The advantage of this format is that students can easily select the areas in which they need the most help from the menu. Each subject is further divided up into more specific topics. Help is also provided on coursework and there are practice questions and general revision tips.

Science
Teachers generally write the best revision sites, and The Interactive Learning Pages is a case in point. The site was put together by a teacher who wanted to collect his teaching materials together in one place but the resource is now freely available to anyone.

Students taking the double science award or modular courses will find some helpful pages that explain aspects of chemical change, structure and bonding, waves and radiation and much more. These online lessons are illustrated and include interactive quizzes to test knowledge.

The Guardian also provides a terrific bank of learning and revision resources at learn.co.uk. See the science Key Stage 4 area for a good set of online lessons under the general headings of Life Processes and Living Things, Physical Processes, and Materials and Their Properties. The graphics are great and there are quizzes, revision notes and reinforcement activities to help master the content.

The Science Active website is strong on animated PowerPoint presentations in the field of atomic structure and bonding. This is backed up by worksheets, an elements database and a quiz.

Science students at Nether Stowe School in Staffordshire found that one of the best ways of learning a concept was to teach it to someone else. They have done this by preparing slide presentations to explain the concepts behind the blast furnace, among other topics, and there's a good biology section too. You can find their material at sciencepages.co.uk.

With a good contents list, index and search tool, gcse.com makes it very easy to find what you need. The main emphasis is on physics and key information is broken down into clearly explained sections.

There's a manageable amount of information on each page so it's not too overwhelming and there's a series of multiple choice quizzes to test what you've learned. Helpful illustrations are used and there is an extensive online glossary.

English
Highly recommended is English Biz, which comes with a great set of downloadable guides covering many aspects of the subject such as fiction, non-fiction, drama and poetry, Shakespeare, grammar and much more. Key words are explained and the site covers essay-writing tips such as how to argue, persuade and describe.

Another site packed with useful teaching and revision resources can be found at English Resources, which is aimed at the Scottish curriculum as well as the English one. Material is conveniently listed under topics such as media, literature, language, biography and poetry.

This vast resource includes revision guides, fact sheets, worksheets, key quotations, test papers, essay plans, investigations, quizzes and writing guides.

Andrew Moore, a teacher currently working for the Directorate of Lifelong Learning for Yorkshire Council, has established a site full of great English resources at universalteacher.org.uk. The website covers many aspects of literature and language and there are even audio files of classic poetry, which is handy as it lets students hear how a poem flows.

Guides to many relevant poems and other texts written both before and after 1900 are provided, as well as revision notes. Poems from other cultures and traditions are included and tutorials are given in aspects of media and drama. The site is part of the Association of Teachers' Websites, so there are links to many other tremendously useful sites that have been written by teachers.

It is, of course, vital to be able to make a point or argument clearly in an essay, so if grammar or writing is a weakness visit the Grammar Lady, a site run by a grammar expert who will answer queries on the correct use of English. The most useful part of the site is the FAQ section, which covers all you need to know about punctuation along with confusions such as when to use 'who' and 'whom', 'that' and 'which'.

Modern languages
Civilisation Francaise is well illustrated with colour photographs and is aimed at reinforcing your knowledge of French culture and language. It consists of online interactive activities under various categories such as Les Fetes, Les Transports and L'Habitat. You'll need RealOne Player to enjoy the associated audio clips; download it here.

Audio clips are also a main feature of French Revision The intermediate area of this site provides past GCSE papers and revision help in the form of interactive exercises covering listening skills, reading and writing. It is recommended that the exercises are repeated until known by heart. There are also a large number of games available on the site.

Good German revision material can be found at S-Cool. This site's GCSE material is organised by topic and includes accommodation, food and drink, health, shopping, holidays and a good grammar section. Tenses, word order and definite and indefinite articles are among the many useful subjects covered. Explanations are clear and examples are provided. The graphics are excellent and there are opportunities for drag and drop and other interactive formats.

The BBC's Bitesize revision sites are all highly respected, and Aunties' Spanish offering is no exception. Listening, reading, speaking and writing activities are all provided for both at basic and higher level. There are opportunities to revise the topics and then be tested on them. There is also a chance to ask questions with the SOS teacher facility, if encountering something particularly puzzling.

History and Geography
A marvellous first stop in any geography revision tour should be Pupilvision, which is stacked with useful support in the Key Stage 4 section, divided into Year 10 and Year 11 topic headings. These provide an opportunity to revise map work skills, make a virtual urban fieldwork visit and view the coastal images resource bank.

Additionally, information on glaciation, rivers, industry, development and interdependence are also covered. There's a selection of past exam questions on offer and several case studies to examine.

Geoexplorer at has a really useful downloadable geography revision timetable. Additionally, there are case studies, revision sheets and a list of key words that are likely to crop up in the exams, accompanied by a full glossary of these terms.

Channel 4 has provided some well-illustrated revision material at channel4.com/learning. You can search for educational material on just about any subject using the search tool, which can be tailored to find information appropriate to a particular age group or search using a keyword.

This can be useful for finding the online resources that are provided to back up the educational geography TV series, Place and People. Diagrams, explanations and activities are all designed to help reinforce geography learning, even if the student didn't see the TV series.

History students will find their needs well catered for at activehistory.co.uk. Select GCSE for resources on the Cold War, Nazi Germany, the Russian Revolution, the First World War and other topics. The revision area provides some useful fact sheets, a chance to interview Hitler and some great historical games, including role play that teaches students about the threats to the throne in 1066.

Another good place for history material is Greenfield History site. Here you'll find revision sheets that present all the most important information on a topic such as the Treaty of Versailles or the creation of the League of Nations, example essays and an archive of questions and answers. Additionally a How do I? area covers essay-writing tips, exam techniques, primary evidence, cartoon interpretations, source work and dates.

ICT, DT and business studies
See ICT GCSE for a terrific set of project guides covering spreadsheets, databases, word processing, web design and slide presentations. Each of these is broken down into stages of analysis, design, implementation and evaluation. Additionally, there are downloadable exercises, a quiz section and a fascinating set of animated movies.

Soham College has listed all the year 10 and 11 modules in ICT. All are explained using helpful illustrations. There are also coursework guides, an exam paper and 26 revision topics to choose from.

Design technology is another subject very well served by online resources for students and teachers. A good example is the Design Technology Department. Covering resistant materials, packaging and many other aspects of the syllabus, the site is continually updated and offers wonderful explanatory texts and diagrams. Teachers' notes are also provided and there is a good virtual school DT department.

Similar resources are available at Design and Tech, and the subject search area offers material relating to six main subject headings, including food technology. This site allows you to submit photographs of your creations to their gallery and also links to the DT areas of several school websites.

Provided by The Guardian, the Business Studies section at learn.co.uk provides a comprehensive and well-presented set of online lessons in the fields of the business environment, business strategies, forms of ownership, finance, personnel, marketing, purchasing and production.

Each of these main sections is further subdivided and the student can opt to do as many or as few of them as they wish. After completing the online activities that make up the lesson, there is a test. The site also provides a revision guide and planner.

The learning materials zone of bized.ac.uk is also worth a visit as it covers business studies, economics and accounting at GCSE level and above, providing material for both teachers and students such as worksheets, simulations, exam questions and online activities.

Learn your lessons well
Online revision resources are a great way of supplementing revision from class notes but are not a replacement for consolidating the work a student has covered in school as part of their GCSE study programme.

There is a great deal of high-quality educational material available online and much of it makes good use of a student's computer skills, making online study a valuable part of a student's education.

It's worth checking to see if your school, or your child's school, has a subscription to any educational online resources that the student could access from an ICT suite, the local library or home.

If a student wants to use online resources as a study aid, it would be worthwhile talking to their teacher about this, who may be able to recommend other sites we've not been able to cover here or could help the student devise an online revision programme.

Remember also to make good use of textbooks, handouts, CD-Roms, printed revision guides, class notes and other recommended material.

Peripheral revision
With a bit of online exploration, you can turn up lots of other useful educational resources on the internet. A good starting point is publishers' websites, where you can often find material to supplement printed resources but which can also be used in their own right.

Another great resource is the 24 Hour Museum, through which you can access 2,500 museum and gallery websites, which can prove particularly useful for students of history and art. There's also a special zone for teachers.

If, when it comes to revising a topic, there is one aspect of it that still isn't making sense or you want to check a historical date or fact and can't find the answer on the web, AOL members can get advice from qualified teachers in a teacher-moderated chatroom. This can be accessed via the keyword 'GSCE', which takes you through to the member area designed specifically to help with GCSE revision.

Submit a query in the chatroom and one of the teachers on duty will send an answer within 48 hours. There's also plenty of information for key GCSE syllabus subjects on the AOL site and you can chat to other students revising for their GCSEs on the student message boards.