Emma Archbold

About

• During her two years at SME, Emma has created a wide range of resources, including revision notes, topic questions and videos. She is particularly passionate about video creation and loves seeing Biology come to life with the incredible animations and explainers on our site.

• Prior to working at SME, Emma was a Biology teacher for 5 years. During those years she taught three different GCSE exam boards and two A-Level exam boards, gaining a wide range of teaching expertise in the subject. A particular highlight of her teaching career was taking a group of students to Honduras to the cloud forest to carry out fieldwork, then travelling down to the coast and getting scuba diving PADI certified and exploring the incredible coral reefs of Utila.

• Emma has always been passionate about helping her students to achieve the highest possible grades in their exams, guiding hundreds of students to achieve amazing results and accept places at their dream universities.

• During her teaching years she taught herself graphic design in order to create amazing worksheets and flashcards for her students, and continues to use that love of content creation to produce the best possible resources for SME users.

• Outside of content creation, Emma is a keen reader and walker, and loves exploring the countryside of Yorkshire with her golden retriever Teo.

Education

Before teaching, Emma gained an undergraduate degree in Biological Sciences as well as a PGCE, both from the University of Oxford.

Expertise

• At university Emma wrote a dissertation about using ladybirds for biological control in different conditions.

• At SME she particularly enjoys writing questions on the topic of inheritance and genetics.

Top revision quote for students

“I think the look-cover-write-check is a criminally underrated revision strategy that can hugely boost your learning through active revision.”

• I would recommend setting a timer and spending around 30 seconds to a minute trying to memorise all the key information from a page of your notes (this time may vary depending on your understanding of the topic, size of the topic, or reading speed). After you have done this, cover the page and write out everything you remember. If you are worried about making a mess or the cost/environmental impact of using lots of paper for this then using a wipe clean white board will work just as well. Once you have filled the page with all the information you remember then look back at your notes. In a different coloured pen review any mistakes or missing information. Take a few seconds to reflect on this, then cover everything over (or rub it out) and start again. You should be able to see an improvement in your memory of this topic over time.

• If you are finding this strategy challenging then break it down to initially just looking at key words and nothing else, once you’ve got those memorised you can gradually build up to learning definitions and any extra information on the page. Note that you don’t need to have written your own notes to use this strategy, an SME revision note, textbook or revision guide page would work just as well.