I have often tried to figure out what the differences are between the CGP Science workbooks and the CGP Science workbooks which are grade 8-9 targeted. I wanted to know if the questions are duplicated and if it is worthwhile buying both. I searched and I never found the detail that I wanted so I thought I would now try and answer it myself.

I was given the Edexcel International GCSE Chemistry Exam Practice Workbook Grade 8-9 targeted by CGP and I bought my own Edexcel International CGP Chemistry Exam Practice Workbook. I want to point out that even though CGP gave me the one workbook it was NOT for the purposes of this post, this post is 100% because I got frustrated trying to figure this out for myself.

Okay first look/ thoughts.

The Targeted workbook is a lot thinner that the normal workbook and does contain few pages and fewer questions (the Targeted workbook has only 71 pages of questions while the normal workbook has 125 pages).

Content wise they do cover the same topics but the targeted workbook is a lot more specific in which parts of the topics it has questions on. If you look at the contents page and just look at Section 1 – Particle and mixtures, the targeted workbook only has questions for State of Matter and Elements, Compounds and Mixtures (6 pages of questions)

whereas the normal workbook covers a much wider range and totals 10 pages of questions.

Okay so you do get a more questions in the normal workbook.

Are the questions duplicated? In others words if you bought the normal workbook would it include all the same questions in the targeted workbook. The answer is NO they are NOT duplicated. The questions in the normal workbook and the questions in the targeted workbook are different. (This was always a big question of mine as I did not want to buy 2 workbooks which just had duplicate questions in them).

The normal workbook does include a wider range of questions in that there are a lot more quick questions whereas the targeted workbook has have longer questions (these are the harder questions).

For an example this is the same page firstly in the normal workbook

And now in the targeted Grade 8-9 workbook

What are my thoughts.

I like the normal workbook as it includes a range of questions from easy to hard and there are more questions for each topic, so you can test the basics and also test harder content in one go. As a home educator I feel like this is a must have resource. However if your kid is wanting to go for the higher grades than the targeted workbook does offer lots of extra practice for those harder questions. So it is a case of what are you needing and how confident does your kiddo feel about the easier content.

What are we going to use? Actually Both. Yip I am going to use both with my son as I want to make sure we are completely confident with all those easy marks questions but I know we are going for higher marks so I also want to give him extra practice with the more challenging questions as well.