How to get an A* in GCSE music composition

I look back on GCSE Music now as a great time! I don't miss the stress of composition deadlines though, so I thought I'd share my advice for anyone trying to write something good for their GCSE.

what's in my sixth form pencil case?

I'm a huge fan of stationery! There's nothing better than a beautifully well coloured and organized page of notes, using lovely pens.

I hope that this serves to maybe give you some advice on what you need to bring to sixth form, as well as feeding the need to look at pictures of nice pens.

(When I was taking these pictures, my boyfriend was pretty confused over what the point was -"what's in my pencil case? let's see... pens?"- but I hope that, unlike him, you share my combined love of stationery and nosiness which is fueled by these posts.)

smarter reading

There's nothing nicer to me than an afternoon with a cold peach iced tea, in a sunny garden with a book. I know for a fact that my reading list this summer has spilled over a page already!

But looking back, although I know I love to read, I can hardly even remember the books I've read in the last year, or what I learned from them. This summer, I'm hoping to do a few things to make sure this changes.

DIY Standing Desk

So I was googling ways to be more healthy (biscuits and revision seem to go hand in hand to me) and came to a realization which is probably true for most people who go to school:

We sit down for most of the day!

Sixth Form Bullet Journal: Getting Started

I have this kind of obsession with recording everything. If I'm not able to flip back to a page telling me what I did on a certain day, the time will have been "empty".

I've dealt with this in the past by keeping about a thousand notebooks. Poetry in one, diary in the other, another for my homework tasks, one for dreams... the list was endless, and I always was misplacing them.

But I've been reading some organization blogs lately and found out about bullet journalling.  I've felt so much more productive and in control ever since I started!

AS Biology Study Games

Little games and flashcards are super fun to revise from, so I summarized AQA AS level biology onto memrise, unit by unit, from the CGP textbook.

A* GCSE Art Sketchbook + Tips

GCSE Art last year, despite the massive quantities of coursework, was actually really rewarding in the end! Although it can be a little stressful, here are some things I think helped me on the way to that A* grade:

Fun Language Learning

Although learning a language is daunting, I find that with these methods, my revision sessions for AS Spanish pass so quickly. The great thing about language learning is that you can have fun viewing media as you would anyway, just in a different language.

A Grade AS English Essay, Edexcel 2015

As a student of the new 2015 Edexcel AS English syllabus (I'm studying "A Streetcar Named Desire", "The Handmaid's Tale" and "Frankenstein". How about you?) I'm finding the lack of any resources or past papers a tad offputting.
I therefore thought I'd share with you a poetry essay I did, which somehow got me 21 out of 24 marks, an A1 grade.

I hope you find this helpful!