How to Revise IGCSE Add Math (a Method, Not a Mood)

Add Math punishes passive revision more than any other IGCSE. You cannot read your way to an A, recognition is not retrieval, and 0606 examines retrieval under time pressure. Here is the method that works, distilled from eight years of watching what separates improving students from stuck ones.

Rule 1: every revision activity produces written working

Highlighting, re-reading, watching videos, these create familiarity, not capability. The test for any session: did you produce solutions on paper, from a blank page? If not, it was preparation for revision, not revision. Even “learning notes” should be active: read the topic notes, close them, reproduce the method on a fresh example.

Rule 2: revise in the topic order that pays

Marks aren’t distributed evenly. Calculus first, the largest topic. Then trigonometry, quadratics, logs. Then triage everything else by your weakness, not comfort, revision time spent on topics you already score is decoration. The 8-week plan sequences all 14 topics this way.

Rule 3: re-do, don’t review

When a question beats you, reading the solution feels like closure, and changes nothing. The fix loop: read the solution, understand each step, close it, then re-solve from a blank page. Then re-solve again three or four days later, cold. A question isn’t learned until it’s been beaten twice without help, with a gap between.

Rule 4: keep an error log

Every dropped mark in practice gets one line: question, topic, and cause, knowledge (didn’t know the method), technique (knew it, lost marks in the writing, see method marks), or care (slip). After three weeks the log tells you exactly what to fix; most students find two causes producing 80% of their losses, usually off the common mistakes list.

Rule 5: simulate the real thing

From 6 weeks out: full papers, timed, with Paper 1 done calculator-free, marked against real mark schemes. Exam capability is a separate skill from topic capability, and it only trains under exam conditions. Two papers a week in the final phase is the single strongest predictor of grade movement we see.

Rule 6: protect the formulas

Ten minutes, twice a week: write the formula list from memory, check, drill gaps (the method). Formula recall decays silently while you revise other things; the standing drill prevents exam-week surprises.

A tutor compresses this whole system: the error log gets kept for you, the re-dos get scheduled, and the working gets marked by someone who knows where 0606 marks live. That’s what our weekly 1-to-1 classes are, and the first hour is a free trial, booked over WhatsApp.