AS and A Level Edexcel Music Essay Writing Skills

A thorough yet student-friendly guide on how to approach essay questions (Q5/Q6) in the Edexcel Component 3 AS and A Level Appraising written exam. Step-by-step advice and applied practice exercises for students to build essay writing skills and deliver excellent essay answers.

Addresses the issues of essay writing post-GCSE... Valuable for learning how to plan and write good, informative and succinct essays under the pressures of exam timings

T Murphy, Teacher & Peer Reviewer
Includes:
  1. A breakdown of the exam format – including decoding the command words.
  2. A focus on writing skills – activities and advice building up from selecting single words to constructing full paragraphs to planning the essay structure – helps students write clearly, accurately and effectively to demonstrate their musical knowledge to its full advantage!
  3. Exam-style materials such as practice questions, writing templates, model answers and student-friendly mark schemes – perfect preparation for the real thing!
  4. Answers to all activities to encourage self-assessment and improvement, even during study leave.

Excellent, well-written resource... clear, methodical and covers relevant areas to improve essay writing skills

M Durnell, Head of Music & Peer Reviewer

Teach in class or hand out for independent study to support students in gaining essential essay writing skills and confidence for the exam!

What do teachers say about this resource? (9174)

Excellent and clear. Very helpful examples and pupil exercises to help develop their essay skills... Easy for [students# to refer to regularly and have alongside as they plan their essays... It has separate sections for the different skills, meaning it’s straightforward for pupils to follow... Very worthwhile for the essay questions. Lots of useful tips to achieve the higher marks.

S Mackenzie, Deputy HoD & Customer

Clear and methodical and covers relevant areas to improve essay writing skills for A Level Edexcel Music. As well as describing the command words, it specifically suggests where these sort of questions might be in the exam... It includes plenty of examples to highlight good practice... I like the 'rewrite' correctly parts, where students need to use correct terminology in their writing - this seems like a fun way to improve essay writing skills and is something that it instantly accessible... Often essay writing guides can be all reading and no writing, which is not the case here. These activities ensure that writing is being practised, which is the most important element in this resource... The resource is also clearly differentiated, with parts specifically aimed at higher achieving students to push the A/A* grades... This resource clearly targets structure, command words, language and presents plenty of working opportunities to engage with the set works... It is instantly useable to students and teachers with minimal preparation work required... An excellent, well-written resource which can be used instantaneously by teachers with minimal preparation work!

M Durnell, Head of Music & Peer Reviewer

A very clear, well thought out and logical resource. It clearly addresses the issues of essay writing post-GCSE which can be a struggle for some students. The pace of the resource is good and the focus is always clear. I particularly like the build up of essay writing skills from the start of the resource, guiding students through planning, selecting content, sentence structure, paragraph structure etc. I liked the variety of task types - some to work on individually and some for discussion with peers. I liked that although the focis of the resource is on essay writing skills, there is still plenty of content-specific material too and opportunity to expand on knowledge as well as skills through the tasks with links to spotify/youtube... I also liked the fact that the author clearly shows the different approaches needed for 'discuss' and 'evaluate' questions... This resource is valuable for learning how to plan and write good, informative and succinct essays under the pressures of exam timings.

T Murphy, Teacher & Peer Reviewer