OCR runs two GCSE science suites. Gateway Science is Combined Science A, J250, which is this guide. Twenty First Century Science is Combined Science B, J260 and is organised completely differently.

The code is on your exam timetable. Gateway biology topics are numbered B1 to B6.

This is the Foundation tier guide, offering grades 5-5 to 1-1 of the double award.

At OCR the tier also changes the paper number. Foundation sits Papers 1 to 6 and Higher sits Papers 7 to 12. You are sitting Paper 1 (Biology) and Paper 2 (Biology).

Your teacher decides the entry, usually during Year 11. If you are moved up to Higher you will need the Higher guide, which adds the higher-tier content.

Then you need a different guide. The separate sciences are Biology A (J247) and they examine more biology than Combined Science does.

The one you want is OCR GCSE Biology A, Foundation.

Paper 1 (Biology) covers Cell Level Systems, Organism Level Systems, Scaling Up. Paper 2 (Biology) covers Community Level Systems, Genes, Inheritance and Selection, Global Challenges.

The second paper assumes the content of the first, so nothing from the first half is ever safely dropped. The full breakdown is here.

Yes, and they sit in the topics they belong to rather than being folded into theory: magnification and scale, surface area to volume, rates of reaction from graphs, percentages and percentage change, ratios in genetic crosses, and the statistics used on ecological sampling data.

OCR examines practical work on the written papers rather than in a separate component, so the techniques sit inside the topics they belong to: microscopy and slide preparation, food tests, enzyme investigations, osmosis, photosynthesis rate, sampling with quadrats and transects, and culturing microorganisms aseptically.

By subtopic, never by topic. The largest topic here is 233 questions, which is not a session. It divides into subtopics of 8 to 25 questions, and one of those is twenty minutes.

Any point in Year 10 or Year 11. Both papers are sat at the end of Year 11 and cover the full two years, so no part of the guide is too early.

The usual pattern is a subtopic in the week it is taught, then returns on days 1, 3, 7, 14 and 30.

Yes. This guide handles recall. Past papers handle the six-mark answers, the unfamiliar contexts and finishing the paper in the time. OCR publishes them free.

A PDF of 806 exam-style questions covering the whole of OCR GCSE Combined Science Biology, Foundation tier, with the answers printed after each topic.

It is not a textbook. It is the tool for getting taught content into memory and for showing whether it went in.

Three things decide it, and all three are on the exam timetable.

The suite. OCR Gateway is Combined Science A, J250. Twenty First Century is Combined Science B, J260.
The route. Separate sciences, sat as three GCSEs, are not the same as Combined Science, a double award covering all three.
The tier. Foundation offers grades 5-5 to 1-1 of the double award, and at OCR the tier changes the paper numbers.

This is Combined Science A (J250), the double award worth two GCSEs, of which this is the biology third. This guide is the Foundation tier, sitting Paper 1 (Biology) and Paper 2 (Biology).

There should be handwritten answers on paper and three passes over the same questions. The method produces two numbers each session, the score on the first closed-book pass and the score on the third. Those two numbers are a better thing to ask for than the number of hours spent.

Rereading and highlighting are the two most common revision activities and Dunlosky and colleagues rated both low utility in their 2013 review of ten techniques. They raise how familiar the material feels without raising the ability to produce it with the book shut.

The method page sets out what to do instead.

£7.00 for the whole specification at that tier. A GCSE biology revision guide is usually £6 to £10 and a full textbook £20 to £30. The three sciences within Combined Science are sold as three guides because chemistry and physics are examined on their own papers.

51 subtopics at roughly twenty minutes each is about 17 hours for a full first pass of the course. Returns afterwards are three to five minutes each.

Partly. Foundation carries the content common to both tiers, so everything in this guide stays relevant. A student moved to Higher would need the Higher guide as well, because Higher adds content that the Foundation papers do not examine.

Past papers, free from OCR, a calculator, and their own notes for anything not yet taught.