Back to School!

Hi guys and welcome back to How to: School! This week marks that very first week back at school since the start of the lockdown! I hope that you are all just as happy as I am to get back to some kind of normal!

Anyway, my school wasted no time in giving me 2 pieces of homework on the first day back – and 2 bits of homework for me to do this weekend! But, on top of this, I would recommend getting into the habit of doing half an hour to an hour of revision each day for GCSEs!

Today (Saturday) has been really hard for me – it has taken me 4 and a half hours to complete my art homework today! And I still have my biology test to revise for, and 2 hours of GCSE revision to do, and I would like to continue to develop my own sculpture for art and well!

Let me know in the comments any issues/experiences that you have all had in the first 2 days back at school!

My Life – Holiday in the UK

Hi guys and welcome back! I know that it has been a couple of weeks since my last post – but there has been quite a lot of stuff going on! Mainly, I went on holiday last week – which is why I didn’t post!

But, as many plane flights are now dangerous due to Covid – my family decided to go on holiday in the UK to the Isle of Wight. And it was actually really nice to have some time away from home – and overseas as well (although it was only a 15 minute crossing on the ferry).

If you could just break the norm a couple of times a week then I would recommend that you do it to make this last week before we all go back to school! I don’t really have a lot else to say – so that is going to be the end of this post (sorry it was so short)!

GCSEs – Pre-Exam Preparations

Hi guys and welcome back to How to: School! This is the first post that I have made since completing the 365 posts in a row goal – and I must say that it feels nice being able to write whenever I have enough time and creativity to increase the quality of these posts!

Anyway, I went shopping yesterday and I shopped for some school supplies that I thought that I could need for next year and its’ GCSE exams – and here are the things that I bought:

  • A clear pencil case (you have to have a clear one for exams)
  • A new 360 degree protractor (because my old one has snapped in 2 places)
  • A new notebook (for notes and revision)
  • A Lino cutter (for art)
  • Macbeth book (for GCSE English – so that I can write in it and annotate)
  • Sticky notes (for, well, notes)
  • Coloured pens (to make my notes stand out more)

But, there are many other things that you should all be buying (just in case you don’t have them aready):

  • All 3 novels that you are doing in English (mine are An Inspector Calls, Hamlet, and A Christmas Carole)
  • Plain folders (for all of your books and textbooks – to keep then neat and organised)
  • Highlighters (for notes)
  • Graph and tracing paper (so that you can practice in both maths, science and art)
  • A clear ruler (so that you can easily read graph lines if the ruler is on top of them – it might sound a bit pointless, but some of my classmates lost out on marks because they couldn’t read and draw on the graph at the same time)
  • A pencil sharpener
  • Coloured pencils (for art)
  • A full dictionary in what ever language you are taking (mine is Chinese)
  • Paints and a sponge (again for art – but you might not need it depending on your course)
  • A scientific calculator (if your one has run out of battery/ is not a scientific calculator already)
  • All of the items in the previous list

Besides all of this – you also need a revision timetable (either print one off online or buy one), so that you can revise efficiently and not get overwhelmed. I recommend that you spend around 3 hours a week – or about half an hour each day with one day off (my preferences would be a Friday or a Saturday)!

I would also recommend speaking to your teachers about exams – and any other books that they would recommend that you get. I will post more about GCSEs in my next post – and it might become a bit of a recurring theme in my future upcoming posts, especially as I will sit my exams in less then a year from now!

I hope that you have all enjoyed this post! If you have any concerns about school or exams – or would like to see me answer your questions in a future post, just leave a comment down below and I will answer it! Also, make sure that you are subscribed to this blog for more school tips and tricks!

1 Year Anniversary!

Hi guys and welcome back to How to: School! Today’s post is my 365th post! Today marks the completion of the one year of posting on this blog – every single day! I would like to thank you all so much for all of the support over this past year!

I really do not know what to say to express how grateful that I am to every single one of you for tuning in to my posts each day! We have done so much together over this past year, such as:

  • Written a whole book based on this blog
  • We have published the How to: School book on Amazon at: https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-School-Dylan-French-ebook/dp/B082ZMQ9F7/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=How+to%3A+School+book+by+Dylan+French&qid=1596803345&sr=8-1
  • We have had 1,468 view on my posts!
  • We have had 757 different visitors to the blog!
  • We have written 364 posts (today is the 365th one)
  • We have 87 subscribers!
  • We have had people from 25 different countries view my posts!
  • We have had 766 likes on this blog!
  • We have gone on holiday to the US and written about it!
  • We have talked about types of teachers and students
  • We have talked about school experiences from travel to exams to revision to bullying
  • We have even sold both the eBook and paperback copies of the How to: School book
  • We created a Reddit page for this blog (until people at my school found out about it and ruined it for everyone else)
  • We have started the GCSE course and moved year groups from Year 9 to Year 10
  • We have survived a full quarantine together
  • We are slowly getting back to normal life while on day 139 since the world changed and normal life ceased
  • We have written 61,292 words on this blog (excluding this post)!
  • And we have so much more to go…

I would like to make it very clear that I do not intend to stop posting on this blog in the near future – but with Year 11 just around the corner, and us reaching and completing out goal; I think that I would like to stop this incredible grind of posting every single day!

I intend to post at least once a week – but I do not yet know if I intend to post on a particular day or not! Thank you all once again for the amazing support throughout this last year – without you, none of this would ever have happened to a 14 (now 15) year old secondary schoolboy from the UK! Thank you!

Quarantime 138 – Thankful Thursday

Hi guys and welcome back to How to: School! Today is my 364th post – so tomorrow is my last day of posting every single day for a year!

So, today’s post might be a bit short – but only so that I have some more time to write tomorrow’s post!

Anyway, so far, the amazing efforts of healthcare worker across the globe have saved: 12,276,592 lives from Covid-19!

That is all that I have to lime for today! See you all tomorrow for my 365th post!!!

Quarantime 137 – Spin the Wheel: This Weeks’ Challenge from Me to You

Hi guys and welcome back! This is my 363rd post on this blog – so the end of me posting every single day is Friday!

Anyway, I spun the wheel of our topics and it landed on a weekly challenge for you guys – so here are your two options:

Either:

Make tomorrow different in every way than today (so if you just sat around all day today – then you have to not do that tomorrow, or if you got up late today – then you have to get up early tomorrow etc.)!

That should be a really fun challenge for you all to try out – especially if you are really bored at the moment!

Or:

Only down up to 1 hour tomorrow on a screen! This excludes watching the TV in the evening – but otherwise you need to come up with something else to do!

Again, I came up with this challenge to help break the monotony of the summer holidays!

That is all that I have time for today! I hope that you have enjoyed and please let me know in the comments if you have completed this challenge!

Quarantime 136 – Life Skills: Being Happy with Your Choices

Hi guys and welcome back to How to: School! Todays’ post is on being happy with your choices that you make on a day-to-day basis.

Many of you may also be feeling the same way as me during this summer holiday – bored and angry that Coronavirus has “ruined your summer”. You may think of all of these glorious things that could be doing instead of sitting around indoors – but how many of those did you do last summer?

Now sure – many of us would be going on a holiday abroad and miss out on that; or miss out on day trips around the county/theater etc. But there are loads of things (at least in the UK) that are open – for now.

So, if you want to sit inside all day – that is fine – but don’t be miserable and blame it on Covid-19. I’ve found myself blaming Coronavirus for me not being able to do everything that I want to do – but would I have actually done that thing on a normal summers day?

Sure, I’m not saying that there won’t be things that you can’t do – or things that might be better or easier if everything was open, but just try it. Because, at the end of the day, it is down to you to make that phone call to a friend and ask them to meet you at a park – they won’t come knocking on your door!

If it makes you feel better – many other people are stuck in the same boat. And when you go back to school – 80% of people you talk to (probably more) will say that they “did nothing over the summer – because we couldn’t because we were locked down”. But we are not in lockdown anymore – only some things are closed – and some things have restrictions in place.

Just think of it as only your local bowling alley that will be closed for the summer for repairs – not that all bowling alleys are closed. Imagine that you just had the worst luck, and that many of the things around you are all closed for refurbishment this summer – what would you do instead? I doubt any of you would want to sit indoors every single day of the summer – so just go out and try it!

Also guys, this is my 362nd post in a row! It would be really great for any of you that are not subscribed already to subscribe – so that we can try and hit 100 subscribers before the 365 day goal!

Quarantime 135 – Time Wasters – Making a Channel

Hi guys and welcome back! Today post is on making a YouTube channel or a channel that is similar.

It is a really good time waster to make videos for fun. You are effectively playing a game that you like and recording it – but there are many levels to YouTube, so you can spend varying amounts of time on it.

You can record a mobile game video using screen record – and just publish the whole unedited thing to YouTube in 10 minutes. Or you could go the other way – facecam, mic, editing etc. and spend a few hours on one video.

You could even make this with a friend and have it as a fun project for the both of you! Try it out and tell me if it was fun or not!

Quarantime 134 – Fun-Day Sunday

Hi guys and welcome back! Today is another Fun-Day Sunday and me and my family went to a castle – but it was also a kind of museum?

The most recent owner of the castle was a collector- so it was a bit of a museum as well, we had a picnic before we went in – and it was just a simple trip out for the day.

I’m not saying that it was the best day of my life – but it was (at the very least) different than just sitting around indoors.

Now that new things being opened up is on pause – take the most of everything that is open – just incase it shuts again!

That is all that I have time for today! See you all tomorrow!

Quarantime 133 – Boredom Flowchart

Hi guys and welcome back! Today’s post is the boredom flowchart as promised!

Here is the start of the flowchart:

If there is anything else that I should include or any other choices – let me know in the comments and I will add to it!

Design a site like this with WordPress.com
Get started