Teaching & Learning Music

XP School - The story so far...

2014-11-15T15:18:00.000+00:00

This video was made by New Schools Network during the first couple of weeks of this academic year.

Our expert writes...

2014-10-02T10:24:00.003+01:00

Scott Engering, our geology expert for the "Rock On!" expedition has been blogging about his experiences with our students during the fieldwork in the Don Gorge. You can view his site here:

http://thelanguageofstone.blogspot.co.uk/

I'll get round to writing about the last six months too at some point... cross my heart.

Whose rigour is it anyway?

2014-03-13T21:52:00.001+00:00

This post originally appeared as an editoral for the Teaching Music site here

“In my own life, when I was most inspired by a teacher, it always involved a real dialogue, a looseness and a real caring and compassion. It was not without rigour, not without discipline, not without standards, but all that was done out of love.”
Michael Goldenberg (Playwright)

The word rigour has been hijacked of late. The term ‘lack of rigour’ has come to be a byword for all that is currently ill in the education system. Politicians of all hues throw the word about as if it is some sort of panacea to which only a dutiful ‘X’ in the correct box will grant access.

Academic rigour in particular is upheld as that which we must all aim towards, where all roads must lead. As something of a project based learning evangelist this all leaves me a little uneasy. Buzzwords are tiresome at any time; originally well-meaning terms such as engagement, rote knowledge or authenticity have been bastardised such that they are used as ammunition in the ongoing war between traditionalists and progressives.

Don’t get me wrong, I agree wholeheartedly that academic rigour is important and far stronger, more eloquent voices than mine have argued the case that music is indeed an academic subject. My problem is that, somewhat ironically, there seems to be a distinct lack of rigour in the way the term is being used. How many have sought to define it, to express it in terms any more nuanced than frequency of testing or levels of performance? To me, these are poor proxies for rigour.

In the 1990s Adria Steinberg developed 6As to help in the design of high quality projects. Alongside authenticity, active exploration, adult relationships, assessment and applied learning she added academic rigour. But what does academic rigour mean for music? What does it sound, look and feel like? Surely it is more than simply the sophisticated deployment of ‘music theory’ or an acknowledgement of the canon. I will return to these questions in a moment.

I have a similar bugbear about the wording of the new national curriculum for music. There is much in there that is ambiguous. Some cheer for the freedom it affords whilst others scratch their heads. However more troubling is the sanitary description of musical understanding. It seems to me to speak of understanding music, but very little of an understanding that is in itself musical. What happened to knowledge of music rather than knowledge about music?

I want to argue that we can look for evidence of academic rigour in test scores or levels, but that at best these are the fossilised remains of the rigour. If academic rigour is, as I see it, embodied in meticulousness, sweating over the details, thinking deeply about challenging content and pursuing an ethic of excellence, then the best place to find it in music is in the making.

I find my views challenged and furthered on this site, and welcome this wholeheartedly. Recently a couple of threads in particular have, for me, stimulated new lines of thought. The first was a narrative description of a year 8 class project where the students had been tasked with making music in dedication to the victims of the Japanese tsunami. I was struck by the rigour of the project. The students were at once expected to develop their knowledge of and respect for a musical tradition other than their own and to deal with an incredibly emotive subject in a way that was musically meaningful and mature. The gravity of the context demanded that the music had to be just right, but, with the skilful help of their teacher, they had to determine for themselves what their kind of right sounded like. As opposed to what might be called a dialectic approach, (i.e. seeking a most correct response through dispassionate argument and counterargument in reference to the established and immutable success criteria) this was truly a dialogic process, a subtle difference, but one that I believe is far more enabling for the development of understanding that is itself musical. Problems or conflicts of ideas were not seen as things to be overcome, but instead students were able to offer answers and unintended calling points that owed as much to their own musical identities as any desire to meet success criteria. Tell me that the students in this class did not develop understanding that was musical, not only of the dimensions (sorry I couldn’t resist) that came to make their music, but also a musical understanding of themselves and of the terrible events of that day.

A more musical understanding

At once I felt a fool. Many of the class projects I and my colleagues had been designing were rooted in the creation of what I deemed authentic products: a horrible music histories documentary, a production of Hairspray or a fitness DVD where each routine was a fusion of club dance and samba, salsa or Indian folk music. Products drove the projects rather than the musical understanding that might ensue. Whilst the outcomes of these projects were by no means poor, their mainly dialectic approach impinged upon the opportunities for the students to develop anything more musical than simply understanding the music that they had made.

My thoughts then returned to the spirit of Paynter and so in turn to a project where my students made an album of ambient music based on local birdsong to promote their conservation. I recounted the lessons where students took their recordings of bird calls, used technology to slow them down, worked out the contours of their beautiful melodies and so in turn their tonality, how they reshaped these melodies to create synthetic phrases. I smiled when I thought of the times when they pushed and pulled at the duration of individual notes within their chords until pulse disappeared and suspended notes created surprising dissonances and consonances of their own. In such projects I truly feel like a musical parent. At times I shape the discourse: I offer honest critique and point them in a certain direction. Sometimes I just plain tell them what to do or perhaps I present them with choices. But then at times I watch them play, or I play alongside them without prejudice and let them see my own imperfections, and boy do they critique! There is the rigour. There it is, with every tentative note, in every choice, rejection or affirmation, in the challenging content and in the developing musical understanding, both between and within each one of us. And knowledge, knowledge of ambient music, of the birds, of our locale, of each other, knowledge developed musically.

If I were to compare and contrast the dialectic versus the dialogic through the sanitary lens of NC levels, paradoxically the students’ music would appear much the same and be enumerated accordingly. In both approaches they listened to models with discrimination, made music for a purpose, chose appropriate sounds for their aims, refined and developed their ideas, but having loved and lived the crafting alongside the students I know that the musical understanding shown by the students and the rigour of the birdsong project far outstripped that in the others.

The levels tell a different story.

And so we come to assessing without levels. Cue the now hoarse cries of hoorah for freedom and heads scratched to the bone. The dialogic/dialectic debate was picked up and considered in this thread.

I don’t have any answers; I don’t think any of us do at the moment. However I am sure that anything that resembles the current system for assessing musical understanding would merely be a Valhalla where any rigour would be in a state of mortis, the musical understanding entombed.

“Even as we enumerate their shortcomings, the rigour of raising children ourselves makes clear to us our mothers' incredible strength. We fear both. If they are not strong, who will protect us? If they are not imperfect, how can we equal them?”
Anna Quindlen (Author)

Culture Part 2: The spaces between and within

2013-12-06T16:04:00.001+00:00

A couple of weeks ago when I last had some time I wrote a rather feeble letter of apology to a former teacher. Other than his name, the events and my sentiments were completely genuine, though of course it was an attempt to preface some of the ideas in this second post about school culture.

At the risk of being the annoying shop assistant who asks if you would like to be shown the shoes... in the shoe shop, allow me the opportunity to unpack some of the key points from the apology.

Students know their teacher very well; the reverse is not always true.
Students can see through teaching stunts.
Teacher content knowledge is important, but pedagogical content knowledge is more important.
Teachers change when they are being observed.
Students assess all of the time, they build an understanding of what is acceptable every time they talk, hand in a piece of work, get out of their seat etc...
If allowed, classroom climate will be driven by the students.

School cultures are unwieldy things. I am reminded of the Mûmakil, the huge elephant-like creatures from Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, driven by a whip, yet constantly peppered by innumerable arrows from all directions. Yet barely flinching, momentum and the whip carries the behemoths on, near impervious and disregarding.

In the same way school cultures are incredibly complex systems, holding fast to an equilibrium which is in some cases highly imperfect and driven by a select few. In most cases I would suggest it is the students with the whip, in fewer it may be adults. This equilibrium is unlikely to change without a significant, concerted and oriented intervention.

This post is more an opportunity for me to think out loud, rather than suggesting a metaphorical arrow to the eye that would stop the beast in its tracks. I think this will be more of a “what” rather than a how, in a couple of posts time I will talk about how I am trying to change the culture in our school as a teacher and leader of areas of the curriculum.

Climate versus Culture

My first point is that culture and climate are interdependent and very closely woven, but they are not one and the same. Culture could be described as shared norms, whilst climate may be viewed as shared perceptions.

It seems obvious when stated this way that climate more often has a bigger impact on culture than the converse i.e. the things we think are happening become the things that happen. The ideal surely is for culture to determine climate i.e. the things we want to happen become the things that happen. This has implications for the way we choose to tackle our schools' cultures.

Currently in the UK, Mr Gove is doing an excellent job of using his journalistic nous to shape the public narrative around teaching and school reform, and so again we have a case where perceptions shape the norms. Regardless of your stance on either side of any traditional versus progressive debate, I'd wager that the majority of teachers fell browbeaten by many of the headlines that we see with regards to our profession and professionalism. This despite the fact that Mr Gove would argue that every reform he proposes intends to improve the quality of and import of teaching. If I had to nail my sails to the mast would say I fall under a progressive banner, but I find myself agreeing with Mr Gove often: single exam boards, single sitting of exams and more. However many teachers' perception of him and his ideology is such that they revert to attack anything he says by default. The stance of opposition to anything from Mr Gove is an equally ideological (which could read cultural) position which has been driven by perception (which could read climate).

Let's look at behaviour as another example. It is far easier as staff to discuss perceptions of behaviour than, say, values and how to uphold them. There are fewer abstractions in the perceptions and so again climate is often allowed to continue to dictate the culture.

We have all heard the advice: "Treat you worst class as if they are your favourite." and whilst I think it is laughable to suggest this single strategy will sort a tough class, there is a nugget of truth in there, which stems from expectations. It stands to reason though that we face tough classes with trepidation because of our perception of what is going to happen when we walk through the door. Of course this perception is based upon experience and therefore reality and I am not trying to muddy the waters of cause and effect, but it is universally supported in research that expectations have a massive effect on outcomes in education.

The example I describe is of a single teacher with a tough class, and so high expectations (i.e. perceptions of capability, whether of behaviour or achievement) are not going to have a great impact without wider systematic support from both adults and students.

Mr Stone obviously didn't like us, that was our fault, but as a professional could he have at least made an effort to pretend? I'm not sure. I know my friend was genuinely touched that his poem was read out. I felt shitty knowing that I had busked mine. Being a kid, I also knew how much effort was required from then on, and how little he knew of me and my capabilities, not that I was some brilliant writer or anything (Clearly!).

The biggest effect size on learning according to Hattie is not feedback as is often quoted. It is "Self-Grading". That is the perception that a student has of their own capability, the knowledge that the teacher has of this, and the teacher's ability to push the student to go beyond this. This knowledge alone is enough in my mind to stake a claim for school leaders to deal with climate and therefore culture. It is a lofty ideal for culture to drive climate, and in the best schools I think this is what happens, but first you must deal with the incumbent climate and the students' perceptions of themselves and each other. Many bloggers have written about growth mindset, grit, or whatever you want to call it, and yes I want my students to have this too. But I also want to argue below that this starting point of the student's view of his or her own capability, this seemingly inner perception is far from private.

Student to student discourse

Graham Nuthall describes different domains within the classroom, the public and highly visible (from the teachers' perspective) of teacher to students. There is the private world in the mind of the student which I have alluded to above.

I would also suggest that although it was outside of the remit of Nuthall's research, the adult to adult domain must be considered. Schools are hierarchical systems of course and so this domain too has its own complexity, adults change how they behave when other adults come to their classrooms, they form cliques, and share perceptions that inform the adult culture and therefore shared norms.

Through the naive eyes of a child I thought perhaps that the principal had come to the class to try and help sort behaviour. Knowing now what I do about how many schools work (and also from other staff who worked at my alma mater and have kept in touch) he could only have been there as a less benevolent presence for poor old Mr Stone. If his role were supportive, he would have insisted that Mr Stone do what he always did, he would have come to more than one lesson, he would have at least spoken to us during the course of the lesson. He never did.

Then there is the world of student to student. This I would argue is a treacle like ether through which all the other domains are mediated. It is the student to student domain that has the biggest impact on school culture. How many classrooms are dominated by a minority of individuals, to whom social gravitas is attached, often for their poor behaviour? I have to admit I have never worked in a "proper tough" school other than a few days here and there when I did supply whilst gigging. I am certain though that there is a critical and often silent mass in the majority of classrooms across the country that feels unable to wade against the waves of those who create the bigger splashes.

This paralysis is symptomatic of unspoken the hierarchies which also exist within the student to student domain, often hidden from the teacher. This is the student who we see letting another edge past them in the lunch queue, who, without our intervention, would do nothing.

The preference is clearly for a school where students don’t push in the lunch queue. In the meantime, the way we will get there is by shaping the student to student domain, where the critical mass i.e. the other students in the queue, make it clear that pushing in is not what we do round here.

I have made a case for school culture to drive climate, I also believe that the norms of the student to student domain are where most attention should be focussed.

I see it as an important first step in dealing with incumbent climate to flatten this hierarchy and improve the nature of student to student discourse. Indeed, in some instances the effect of this desire to adhere to the perceived norm for students teetering on the brink becomes a degenerative force. I’m sure we have all watched students slip away, feeling helpless when pitted against the overriding adolescent need to fit in. This is the power of the student to student domain. This is where efforts should be concentrated. This is where the battle is won and lost.

This is getting pretty lengthy now, so I’ll leave it there. In my next post I will talk more about the interactions between these domains.

An apology: "Dear Mr Stone" - Culture Part 1

2013-11-03T20:13:00.001+00:00

Dear Mr Stone,

I'm sorry, I wish I had listened. Looking back now, you were clearly an articulate, passionate and knowledgeable teacher but really you didn't give yourself a chance.

Actually, that’s not fair, I think you could have been one of the best teachers in the school but I was a stupid fool. (I still use too many tautologies to this day!)

At the start of the year we read Robert Cormier’s ‘After the first death’. You were a really good storyteller Sir, I mean really good. It’s a shame you never used that when you were doing proper lessons and teaching us stuff. I remember like it was yesterday, the power and urgency of your voice as you read the passage when Kate gets shot.

That power waned as the year went on though and our behaviour worsened. I'm sorry, I don't seem to recall much of what you said in lessons, except that is, the times when we would get you onto talking about yourself. That was interesting. I definitely remember that you liked boats and actually sailed yourself. You made models of them and put them in glass bottles. That was proper impressive.

Mr Stone, we both know that in the big scheme of things, like nationally, our class would not be thought of as particularly rowdy or troublesome, but in the context of the very strict school that we shared, we were an irk. You used to always say you had beef with our class and I'm not surprised.

The things I remember most about your lessons were the times that you tried to get us back, especially the occasion when, to illustrate your beef, you ate some powdered Bovril; that was a good lesson (I think).

One time early in the year, we had a deadline for a poem; typically I had left it until the last minute (a habit to which I am still shackled). I cobbled together something at break time before the lesson. It's a bit embarrassing now but I recall that the poem was called ‘Man’, and there was a line that went "safe in the knowledge that offers suffer". You didn’t really know me, that’s alright though, I bet you taught hundreds of us every week so what was another wise-cracking little arse wipe. I knew you though: 'He'll lap this up' I thought.

Sure enough the poem was read out the next lesson. You also read out my friend's poem about his dead cat. He was never that great at writing so he was right chuffed. He had really poured his soul into it as I remember. Curiously my poem was given the same billing as his.

From then on I knew exactly how much effort I needed to put in.

I am sorry to say that this kid of thing happens a lot in classrooms, and I'm not sure you knew. You see there is the classroom that you saw, and the hidden one beneath. The one where we constantly weighed up what was acceptable every time we entered the class, handed in our work or tested the silence. This particular world was one where we had worked out that we could get away with just that little bit more; we did this without even saying anything to each other, how very clever we were. The same world in fact, where communication was made, as often as not, by passing notes from neatly aligned desk to neatly aligned desk. The same world where we were so desperate to appear rebellious, particularly in the conformist culture that pervaded our school (actually, I think it was also a lot to do with the misguided view that girls would be impressed).

I think maybe that's why you seemed so frustrated, you just couldn't see why, in a school with impeccable behaviour, you had this class of, well frankly, clowns.

Eventually, you must have thought something was up, or maybe a parent made a complaint because one lesson late in the year all the desks were arranged in a horseshoe and when we got into the room we realised the Principal was there. You looked pretty scared, that was weird.

That lesson was very different, we all behaved of course, but you had changed too. You acted like you liked us, and we looked at a picture by Goya, and read Seamus Heaney. You spent ages telling us about what the words meant and we all shared ideas about why they sounded so good. I still really like him by the way, actually both.

I do remember thinking it very strange that you had changed the way you taught for the Principal. That must have been the reason why it changed right? Surely if there was a problem in the class, you would want the Principal to come in and see it so he could help you… right?

It was definitely better though. You knew loads, and unlike in the lessons before it was as if you let us in on the secret, rather than just wondering why we didn't get it too. I thought 'Wow, I wish I'd listened to this guy'.

We went back to normal seats after that. It seemed you didn't really like us after all, I'm not surprised though.

Mr Stone, I wish I had listened. Looking back you were clearly an articulate, passionate and knowledgeable teacher, but I didn't give you the chance you deserved.

My apologies

Can skill come before knowledge? (Theory Part 2)

2013-10-07T23:36:00.001+01:00

In this post I will attempt to pull together some thoughts on why perhaps in the case of music and some of the more abstract visual arts, knowledge does not necessarily need to precede skill.

Day 5 in the Sky Sports House - Knowledge or Skills: You decide!

Last week I posted about my ham fisted attempts to teach some GCSE harmony to a group of year 9 students during project fortnight. Students were composing music to sit beneath their oration of their poems, with the intention being that the music would build and release tension sympathetically in relation to their verse.

Feeling pretty downbeat after a really bad theory based lesson, I thought I would trial a technique that I had been using with Year 8, who before project fortnight had been working on underscoring films in their normal curriculum time. I came across the idea whilst following the #mtec2013 feed on twitter. James Humberstone (@JamesHumbers), a keynote at the event described a two fingers, two hands piano method for composing chords. He also has a youtube video in which he explains the method:

The basic premise is that students compose chord sequences using 4 random notes in each chord. In some cases students may need to search for the sound they want through a process of trial and error, whilst others may use their existing knowledge and perhaps undertake sonic experiments at the edge of any existing harmonic theory that they may possess.

I had the students at acoustic instruments rather than sequencing notes directly into Cubase. Students at a piano could use two fingers on two hands, or guitarists/string players could work with a partner and combine double stopped parts.

The only restriction I placed on students was that the resultant chord sequences had to sound like the ideas they had in their head.

An interesting outcome was that students tended to move towards the minor key, regardless of their musical experience. Almost all chose to use a limited palette of discrete chords, and most used dissonances sparingly, whether within the chords or with any melodies which were then hung over the harmony.

The freedom of expression in the students' work was marked in comparison to the previous day.

Here are some of the reasons I think why:

The constraints placed on the students were not limiting in an isolated sense. The chords produced using the technique had a maximum of four notes and therefore have the potential to be fairly simple or complex. For example a simple C-G-C-G across two octaves would give an open C5 chord, whilst a cluster of GADE would suggest a jazzy G6/9.
Students had a short cut to sound without the need for any theoretical grounding. I'll discuss the merits of this or otherwise below.
I guess I am better at teaching this way having been a Musical Futures practitioner for a number of years now. This is perhaps a major determinant factor on the outcomes of the students; however I have some pretty firm views on why the MF pedagogy works too.

I think the last two points especially serve to illustrate how the arts and teaching are special. Let me explain. There has been much debate about dichotomies (and indeed the validity of the argument that the dichotomy even exists) between progressive vs traditional or knowledge-centred vs child-centred. I would argue that the dichotomy certainly exists, but that also the the idea that knowledge precedes skill can sometimes be negated or at least when it comes to the arts, and music in particular.

I need to do a lot more research, but I think that the fact that the fundamental unit of music is sound gives it a special place. I think that the existent 'knowledge of music' (rather than about music) is of a deeply personal and cultural nature that we need to tap into as music educators. This connection to students' musical experiences out of school is one of the fundamental tenets of the Musical Futures pedagogy.

'Knowledge of science' and 'knowledge about science' are equally distinguishable when placed alongside music, but the fact that there are (as close as we can get to) immutable truths and empirical proofs colours the way that knowledge of science impacts on learning. Similarly to music, knowledge of science allows one to hypothesise and test the theory, but necessarily there must be an emotional disconnect. Not so in in music (and perhaps the more abstract visual arts) I would argue, where meaning can be incredibly personal. Perhaps the fact that hearing or sensing sound (and later sensing light) evolved before complex and abstract thought has some role to play. I would welcome any comments to suggest otherwise but purely instrumental music seems to me to be open to more varied interpretation in general than say for example sentences in a poem however abstract, as language relies on more concrete and defined structures of meaning.

Also I would posit that Music being rooted in the abstract or at least temporal medium of sound relies on knowledge of music and the motion of sound in order to make meaning and derive an emotional response. In this sense the theory of how to make to sound becomes less important than the response to sound, flipping on the head the traditional hierarchy we have inherited from the Western Classical Tradition. That is the composer has authority in the creation of the music, which is then interpreted by the slightly subordinate performers, who are respected for their ability to accurately reflect the intentions of the composer, finishing with the audience listener who is left to reflect on just how marvellous the "great composers" are, and how much less musical they are in comparison to such esteemed creators.

By giving students a "short cut to sound", we bring in their often tacit yet deeply rooted existing notions of what music is indirectly. Students search for consonances, dissonances and sonorities that metaphorically resonate with what their expectations are for music that is sad, mysterious or uplifting. We teach them that to listen to their inner voice; more importantly that they too are musical.

Theory is important, a cynical comment may be that it is especially important for passing exams. However I myself remember the joy of the moment I "got" theory at college, not having studied GCSE or A level music. I can still feel the sudden click of the cogs engaging, and even now I still hear the echo of the penny dropping in every sound I make at an instrument or with my voice.

But before any of this, I picked up a guitar and experimented in sound, I poured over books for new chord charts, with no understanding of how they worked, only that I knew which ones sounded cool. (I feel a little uncomfortable writing the word cool, but I think seeing as how I am talking about a past life I can jut about get away with it) Even as a young boy I could play by ear at a keyboard; I was musical before I knew a jot of theory.

I think it is true that one cannot be truly fluent musically unless you have the theory to be able to replicate desired outcomes to a high standard of quality. Semantically, it could be argued that in that case, the student who produces music by trial and error is not skilled. Not skilled in the sense that they can not explain or replicate their outcomes easily. However I would argue that the ability to audiate (think the aural version of imagine) and find the answer to that inner voice is the true musical skill.

Perhaps this is all nonsense and I am just useless at teaching theory. I suspect though that a familiarity with and curiosity about ones own responses to sound is more important than a technical understanding of how sounds may be combined, indeed even these rules have a specific cultural hue depending on your viewpoint. Like I say though, lots more research needed.

The fact that my students might not all have been able to discuss the harmonic theory, or even use appropriate technical language matters not in the outset, for music is itself a discourse, we'll get to the theory later.

Questioning students whilst they work

2013-10-01T23:20:00.000+01:00

The following are a list of questions that were developed by the exchanging notes project team.

They were designed for students to interview composers so they could gain an insight into how they worked and to understand that not all composers work in the same way.

I have found them incredibly useful as questions for my own students when they are creating music, especially when working in practice rooms on informal composing.

The questions can easily be reworked for the context of the project, task or lesson; in most cases just a transfer to the present tense should suffice.

What has struck me is the way that the implicit but requisite meta cognition to respond to the questions drives students ideas forward, despite what, on the surface at least, appear to be reflective rather than generative questions.

In some lessons either I or a Teaching Assistant have simply moved from room to room asking these questions and recording students' aural and musical responses.

Can theory sometimes get in the way of music? Part 1

2013-09-22T21:58:00.000+01:00

At the end of last year I was working on a music and poetry project with Year 9. During the project students composed poems and accompanying music, where the intention was for the music to reflect the tension within the verse.

The project was documented here:

http://stonesinamineshaft.blogspot.co.uk/

Maybe it was just the way I taught it, but my attempts at teaching the students some GCSE theory just didn't work. The idea was to teach the students how chord V can be used to build tension within a chord progression, especially if there is an expectation of a return to chord I which is avoided or delayed.

The students got the concept, as most had an understanding of perfect cadences. The students seemed pretty underwhelmed with their resultant progressions. Most either wrote variations on a four chord trick with an imperfect or interrupted cadence, there were a couple who went through a series of I-V progressions before pedalling away on chord V for an eternity. The vast majority of these were voiced as crotchety Coldplay-esque piano parts or Down Down Down Up Down Up guitar parts, which is only natural considering most of our students' frames of reference for chord sequences.

As starting points these types of idea in themselves, but in isolation the students were not able to really join the dots of the harmonic ideas might for a wire frame upon which other devices could then be hung.

I think perhaps on reflection that the suite of tools with which students were being asked to produce tension was too limited. I often promote the idea that constraint can be an enabling factor for creativity, but this was constraint of an isolating type. Perhaps if I had said the student could only use chords I and V but must build tension, they might automatically began to think about harmonic rate, rhythmic urgency, pushing and pulling the tempo.

I think the mistake I made was partly down to a worry about time. The project was ten days long, and in that students had so many deliverables to complete. I wanted to do a pretty intense burst of theory and imagined that this would give the students impetus at the start of the music of the project, in reality it all felt like a damp squib despite my attempts to convince the students of the potential of their initial sketches.

I went home pretty disconsolate on that day. It had always been an ambitious ideas for a project, but I had done the project first and the chords were something that I felt confident students would be able to compose chords with relative ease, especially as many of the students would have signed up to the project for the musical aspects of the product. No disrespect, and I think it a shame, but not too many of our kids are "Buzzing for poetry"

Line up announced for Band Aid 30: "Err, can we not have Plan B instead please Sir?"

The student's poems were just beginning to take shape and I was genuinely worried that the music was going to be car crash. Plan B was needed. More on that soon!

#callofthewildproject article for Music Teacher Magazine

2013-04-04T09:19:00.002+01:00

Thought I would reblog this now it has been in the public domain for a while, but mostly will have been viewed by music teachers.

On the muddied banks of Arcot Pond, a once-rowdy rabble stood in perfect, patient silence, armed with recording devices and ready to pounce – or at least press record. Only days earlier had we scared away a bird whose call we had hoped to capture, failing to heed the golden rules of stand still and shut up. Now we waited an hour for a bird that never arrived.

‘I guess we should turn back,’ I said, and was greeted with murmurs of disappointment. ‘What do we want to see instead of the heron, then?’ I asked. ‘I would really like to see a swift,’ piped up one enthusiastic voice – and immediately we saw one sweep down, kissing the surface of the water to take a drink. In our excitement at the display we forgot to record any audio samples. But it didn’t matter, as we shared the feeling that we had just witnessed a little bit of nature’s magic.

This enjoyable but not entirely successful recording session was part of our school’s #callofthewildproject, a journey which began two years earlier in San Diego. My colleague Darren Mead and I were fortunate enough to attend a training course at High Tech High (hightechhigh.org), a school in California set up with the aim of preparing students for the real world by making education more relevant to the real world. We returned to the UK looking for ways to incorporate PBL – project based learning, an integral part of the teaching style at High Tech High – into our school’s curriculum.

#callofthewildproject involved the creation of an album of ambient music based on the songs of birds in our local area. Cramlington, where our school is based, is surrounded by areas of natural beauty and diversity, and part of the thrust for the project came from an effort to educate students about Mother Nature’s splendour, in evidence literally a stone’s throw away from our campus.

Darren, who is an Advanced Skills Teacher in Science, had already got his students to make a highly professional guide to the wildlife around Cramlington. For us this was the first time we had really seen the power of PBL. It seemed sensible to build on the foundations the guide and our students had laid down.

At the end of last academic year we were given two weeks in which to carry out a project. Our instinct was to do something musical. Being lovers of Brian Eno, we took much longer than we should have done to realise that ambient music combined with birdsong would be a perfect vehicle for helping our students understand and care about the birds on our doorstep.

I have to be honest and say that before the project I was not a great admirer of birds, but between planning and starting the project something changed. First Darren took me out for a ‘twitch’ to allow us to give the project a trial run, and he showed me the yellowhammer, an endangered bird that has very particular song ending with what sounds like ‘…a little bit of cheese’. Darren’s obvious joy at hearing and then spotting the bird was infectious, and soon I had my recording device out to capture its call.

When we returned to school, I whistled a tune that I had heard in my street being sung by a bird I had not been able to see. Darren said it was probably something common, and to my embarrassment it turned out to be the very common blackbird. In our country and region a singing blackbird, while striking, is not particularly remarkable.

Serendipitously, a couple of days later I walked past a window in my house and saw a female blackbird sitting in a nest literally centimetres away from me on the other side of the glass. It turned out the father was the singing blackbird – my singing blackbird. I was in love.

This change in attitude towards birds was mirrored in the presentations our students made at the end of the project. Our kids expressed genuine sentiments of care for the birds and wanted to tell their community about what the local green areas had to offer in terms of bird variety.

We started by critiquing Darren and my highly imperfect attempt at a track using the blackbird from my garden. We were blown away by the candour and insight of our students. In a classroom workshop where the whole class performed on instruments at the same time, I demonstrated to students how to achieve the combinations and overlapping of colour characteristic of ambient music. The students then worked in smaller teams to put into practice what they had learned in their own compositions.

We listened to their samples from the field, slowed them down and worked out the melodies by ear. Surprisingly most of the birds seemed to sing in the key of F major. We couldn’t find out if this was commonplace; maybe there is another project on this out there somewhere.

Once the students had started they did not want to stop. They prioritised what needed most work and gave themselves specific roles working on the artwork, sleeve notes or music tracks for the album. When they had their latest drafts ready they went to their peers for advice as a matter of course.

The students learned how to identify birds by their appearance and songs, and grasped the protocols for effective bird watching. They made great leaps in the number of birds they could spot in one outing. They also learned how to record samples of nature in the field and import them into their sequenced musical compositions. They were able to pick apart how ambient music works, creating compositions that used birdsong as a stimulus in the context of their own professional-sounding ambient compositions.

At the end of the project Darren and I happened to be presenting to delegates from around the country at our school’s annual festival of learning (http://www.cramlingtonlv.co.uk/festival2012) so we could not be with the kids all the time. I was delighted to see the scene when I popped my head around the door on the final day of preparing for their presentations. They were scribbling on their cue cards, making draft after draft of them, and showing their presentations to each other. We hadn’t asked them to do any of this; they just knew it was the right thing to do and the best way to get quality. At the presentation itself, listening to them talk not just about what they had learned but also about how they themselves had changed, I had to check myself and manage my emotions a couple of times before talking to their parents. Without a doubt this project was the most rewarding, exhausting and proudest two weeks in my teaching career.

I know from the way the students spoke effusively about the project that some fundamental and important learning had taken place. The album was the product of a community, and the students learned to see each other as members of a cooperative and act in ways that being part of a community demands. They learned that anyone is capable of producing work of a high quality, and that hard work is in itself a reward. I can’t bottle any of that or put any numbers on it, but to me it was priceless.

Oh and go buy the album, search for #callofthewildproject on iTunes.

#callofthewildproject was documented at http://callofthewildproject.blogspot.co.uk

CONTEXT

This was a 10 day project delivered when our school’s timetable was suspended for “Project Fortnight” from 18^th -30^th June. The full project plan can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/9lhquff

Students produced an album of ambient music, with information sleeve notes and artwork based on the birds in our locale.

Days 1 – We spent the first morning critiquing existing ambient music as well as our teacher “Do the project first” composition. On that first afternoon we welcomed our expert community bird watchers and went for our first twitch.

Days 2 & 3 – Students were introduced to the recording technology and spent most of the two days in the field recording samples from the birds.

Days 4 & 5 – We began looking at how to create ambient music, first with classroom workshops and then using Cubase to begin to combine some of the recorded samples with synthesised sounds. We also spent some time slowing down the birdsong samples and students worked out the notes each melody by ear.

Days 6, 7 & 8 - During the second week students prioritised work on their composition, artwork or sleeve notes as they saw fit. Critiques happened regularly and students redrafted their work based on the feedback from the class. This was the deadline for the completion of all of the constituent elements for the album.

Days 9 & 10 – Students began to prepare their presentations of learning, and made any last minute adjustments to their work. The project culminated with the release of the album on exhibition day, where the school opened on Saturday 30^th June. Students presented to their parents and members of the public and the album was played throughout the day in our Biome.

#mufu2013 What I learned: Session 4 - Mark Phillips

2013-01-30T21:16:00.004+00:00

Over the last week I have been blogging about the 2013 Musical Futures conference.

Mark Phillips

The last formal session of the first day was given by Mark Phillips, Ofsted HMI and national advisor for Music.

Ofsted have released a number of publications this last year, all available here. If you are a music teacher in any sector in the UK and have not already read these, I would urge you to stop reading this blog and read them now!

There has been a lot of open and frank discussion of these publications and Ofsted wider role on the teachingmusic forums. Again, if you have not signed up to this website do it now.

Meeting Mark confirmed what I had determined from the publications, he is a thoroughly decent and sensible chap, and makes excellent suggestions for how music ought to be taught. I still wonder about "rapid and sustained progress", and will come back to this in another blog post, but Mark was very clear about what he expected from music teachers, departments, schools and their wider partners.

If I could share only one thing from the session, it would be:

THERE ARE NO SUB-LEVELS IN MUSIC.

THERE ARE NO SUB-LEVELS IN MUSIC!

Let's stop for a mid-phrase appraisal. The first 3 notes were a 5c.

Joy of joys, the chosen one come to lead us to Zion! Except that in really it is not quite as simple as that as we all know. There was still much chagrin, in that Senior Management in many of our own schools and those we work with do not seem to be listening to Ofsted's recommendations. There are a number of accounts on the teachingmusic site of documents being placed in the hand of senior leadership and promptly ignored.

I understand the need to input sub-levels from a tracking point of view, but when they are arbitrary to the point that thousands of man hours are being lost across the country as heads of music departments are having to invent something to fit.

We do report sub-levels in our school, though thankfully only once a term. We have no criteria for what a 5c looks like in comparison to a 5a, we just use our best professional judgement based on how many of the statements in each of the NC levels ring true for our students and our SMT are happy to accept our judgement here. There are many inspirational heads up and down the country who talk about professional trust. I think of colossi like @johntomsett who, if his staff are not teaching in the afternoon, he trusts to go home, and do their work when it is best for them and their families. Yet many schools are run on fear (and it is easy to understand whY), and this is where much of Osfted/Gove-bashing is perpetrated. I an not suggesting that the system for inspection is perfect, nor would I suggest Sir Michael would pretend that is the case. But it is a case in point that despite very clear messages from Ofsted which you can read in @oldandrewuk 's here, staff are still being told that learning outcomes must be shared, or discussed, or developed with the students. There does seem to be some impotency on Ofsted's part in terms of getting this message through to school management regimes.

I did ask the question to Mark: "Would Ofsted use an inspection report comment upon the effective of management, where school diktats were having a detrimental effect on music lessons?" The answer was pretty much no, but Mark was at pains to point just how much of a nonsense it was to spend 15 minutes of a one hour music talking about the music that you were going to make before you made it, which by the way is not appraising music. If I could sum up the rhetoric of "Wider Still, and Wider", it is that music lessons and music teaching and assessment should be musical and holistic.

Just a reminder...

THERE ARE NO SUB-LEVELS IN MUSIC!

Mark also made the valid point that if the excuse is in the interests of fairness and you want Music to report data in the same way as other subjects, then give us the same amount of contact time and let us see less kids.

The other main thrust of his presentation was to challenge the long entrenched inequalities in participation. I had hoped to share his presentation with you but trust me in saying that the statistics were not easy to read. Again there was some contest that this is not the case in all schools, and in fairness Mark recognised this, but on the grand scale, the least affluent students take part in music less than those from better off backgrounds, those who do not speak English as a first language take part in music less than.... You can see where I am going here, LAC, SEN, the same is true. This is something that we need to tackle as a community, and by that I mean all stakeholders in music education, Ofsted, senior management, hubs, teachers, parents, governors and government.

The last name there is important, in one of his better acts, Mr Gove has protected (albeit falling year on year) funding for music through the hubs for the next three years. But as Mark Phillips would ask "So What?"

What are we going to do with this money to make sure that Wider Opps, First Access, FSM and LAC remittance schemes have a lasting and musical legacy for our countries?

I don't have any answers or silver bullets. But I did have an extremely positive meeting with our hub leader, and members of our primary/secondary partnership last night which put the wheels in motion for our plans to address these issues.

What I do know at this moment in time is that Musical Futures has and continues to transform my department. As a means of giving all students access to music, valuing students' existing musical experiences and helping students to see themselves as musicians, this is the driving force of change and progress in our classrooms and practice rooms.

Oh, and one last thing:

THERE ARE NO SUB-LEVELS IN MUSIC!

#mufu2013 What I learned: Session 3

2013-01-28T18:40:00.003+00:00

The third session was with Lucy Green, upon whose research the MF informal learning model was developed.

Lucy is currently studying the impact of adopting an aural learning approach in peripatetic lessons.

C# is NOT the same as Db!!!!!

Thankfully, we have come a long way from the clichéd view of the forbidding piano teacher and battered knuckles.

We started the session by experiencing the same process that the students in Lucy's study went through, that is learning a piece by ear that Lucy had composed. The process was very similar to the original pathfinder project based on 'Word Up' by Cameo.

What was fascinating was hearing Lucy describe the various approaches that students take when asked to copy by ear for the first time. Whilst categorising is always a balancing act between usefulness of grouping data together and maintaining integrity to the individual responses, there did seem to be commonalities between students' responses.

"Learning styles" have been much discussed across the blogosphere, but in this instance the word has real currency, especially when are genuinely multiple means to the end. We were able to listen to some of Lucy's students attempts to play by ear. Lucy described a number of different and common approaches:

Impulsive - starts to play immediately, fixes quickly on their "own version", plays repeatedly without checking for accuracy, little fear of the task.
Practical - has a strategy, i.e. uses a scale or related notes to find an anchor then constructs the music from there, listens intently and then responds regularly
Shot in the dark - hesitant at first, performs isolated notes without connecting to each other or the track.
Theoretical - Asks questions about the music, seems to want to mentally map the music first before playing.
Perfect pitch - Plays correct notes straight away, then might display any other style after that.

This was interesting in itself, and I am sure that any music teacher would recognise much of this, especially if they have tried aural learning with their students.

At the end of the session I was left thinking about the way that I connect the learning that happens in my practice rooms with my students and their instrumental teachers and what happens in the classroom. This is also something that has been raised in network meetings in our hub, and it is something I need to work on for sure.

As a Musical Futures champion school, I couldn't honestly say that all of my peripatetic teachers understand the model, or use their lessons to build upon the learning that happens in our lessons.

I asked myself a number of questions that I imagined a departmental inspection by Ofsted might raise. As a head of department, do I make sure that:

peris all know what students are studying in the class?

peris know/understand the MF model?

peris use MF approaches as appropriate?

peris develop all aspects of musicality, and not just performing?

I have to admit the answers to all of these in most cases was either sometimes, or a straight no. Certainly at Key Stage 4&5, I try to make sure that peris know when performances are coming up and what pieces students should be working on for coursework, but on reflection it strikes me that this is a very polarised use of my peris.

I have to say that currently, I have the best team of peris that I have ever had in my time at Cramlington, and that the responsibility for the above questions lies solely with me. Again in fairness to them, they do take a rounded approach beyond mere performance, but this is down to their own skills and not any initiative on my part. What is clear is that a more joined up and holistic approach is needed if there is to be a proper link between classroom and practice room.

I think to the videos here, where Ofsted highlight the good practice that Flegg High School (another MF champion) have demonstrated such a joined up approach, through their hub and the head teacher working with a specialist adviser to help him to understand key issues of music education. From the videos it is clear that the music service have a clear idea what the musical needs of the students in the school are, and are able to advise on what would work in their particular context.

As well as addressing the questions above, it would seem sensible that to ask for my peris to be able to observe my classroom as part of their CPD, ideally with some "An introduction to Musical Futures" style sessions too.

Non of this is rocket science, and I am sure that many schools already do this, but this is what I learned.

#mufu2013 What I learned - Session 2: Classroom Workshops

2013-01-24T21:21:00.001+00:00

The first practical session was a chance to look at Classroom Workshops as an approach to whole class interactive teaching.

The Musical Futures guidance for classroom workshops can be found here.

The methodology arose from the work done by the Guildhall Connect programme.

The basic premise is that musicians work as a large ensemble to develop a piece through a collaborative and holistic process, where the key skills of appraising, performing, improvising and composing each inform each the other.

This session was led by the impressive Robert Wells, and followed the usual process of warm-ups which led into whole class work, followed by break-out tasks which fed into the final piece.

There is a discussion thread on the Musical Futures network thread on classroom workshops here. I would not begin to pretend to be an expert, but having used the approach for a while now, I'd like to think I can give some share some advice that has helped me on my way. Already it has been noted how this way of working can seem daunting at first, in my mind this is for a number of reasons:

Perceived issues with classroom management - In fact, I have rarely found this to be a problem. Provided you have already established rules for when to play and when not to, the students have little time to think about anything other than music. As you become more used to working in this way, students will spend increasing amounts of time playing/discussing/refining and even the most tricky students seem to buy into it. I think this is in part due to the pace that comes with classroom workshops, but also the sound of 30 people playing together really is wondrous to a disaffected young person.
Not having instruments - This is a genuine issue in many schools, but percussive pieces work really well in classroom workshops, and body percussion is instantly available if you don;t have a trolley full of stuff to whack. The voice is also crucial in any music teaching, and Ofsted have recently highlighted an issue with a lack of high quality singing in schools, especially Secondary. The argument that "My students won't sing" just doesn't cut it I'm afraid. To me, the mind and voice are the first instrument, regardless of any instrumental experience. Singing is cultural thing and so it takes time for it to become pervasive in school, especially with older children. We are nowhere near where we want to be as a school yet. However we ought to be teaching our students to sing and use their voice to understand music. This is where the warm-ups come in. More on that later.
How can students be learning? They often seem to be simply playing repeated patterns - Yep, it's great isn't it? I've never sat in a communal space in an African village, but I've seen videos and heard recordings, and I'm just about certain that actually experiencing such music would put to shame anything I have ever managed to thrash out on a stage. Incidentally, it is of great interest to me that as the musicologist Nicholas Cook points out, the people of many African tribes would not understand our concepts of performing, composing, listening or improvising, to them they are all one and the same thing. This is why I love to teach using workshops, it is the time when I fell most able to do holistic music making alongside my students. If you are genuinely concerned that students will perform simply repeated patterns, then address this in the way you plan the sessions. Have some students work on longer phrases, or work on the structure of the piece such that there are demands in variety and technicality that challenge your most able pupils.
I am not a very good composer, I feel a little naked - To this I would say from the outset, be sure where you are tight, and where you are loose. That was a great piece of advice given to me by a great man named David Jackson, at the time he was talking about curriculum design but it applies equally here. By that I mean, once you know what you are trying to teach/introduce through the workshop, you can decide what devices/structures are immutable and where you will allow creative input from the students. It is actually rather scientific when you think about it, but to the kids it is magic. In reality it is a trick, as before the workshop starts you should have an idea of some scaffolding musical ideas that will guide the composing process, which could be echoing phrases or two note motifs as in Robert's workshop. For minimalist music you might insist on phase shifting or note addition for example. I think this seemingly boundless opportunity is what scares some teachers, but if you decide in advance, 'What do I want the kids to learn?', the rest becomes more easy, listen to them and guide them in a semi-predetermined direction. Much creativity comes from constraint!

The session with Robert was a timely reminder for me in many respects.

Yes, there were some great ideas for warm-ups, but there is a danger with many of these sessions that we leave with only brilliant ideas for activities we could try. Don't get me wrong, it was genuinely inspiring to work alongside so many other creative and enthusiastic people, and there was a real buzz as we left the conference with conversations about all the things we would try when we got back to school.

However, what is central to Musical Futures is the pedagogy, not the activities. Musical Futures is not and never has been about leaving kids in a practice room, that is just poor teaching. It is about the pedagogies of Informal learning and Non-formal teaching.

So here's why, under the bonnet as well as on the shiny surface, Robert's session (which can be found here) was so brilliant.

Warm-ups should link to the learning - In particular, copying Robert's movements the beat after he made them tied in directly with the musical intentions for the session; to form consonances and dissonances through echoing of phrases.

We should start from our students' own musical experience - We sang Ba Ba Black sheep as an ensemble, but in completely free time, changing syllable/pitch only when we need to breath. The sound was genuinely breathtaking and at once complex, but all from the simplest and most recognisable of starting points. The constantly shifting textures and note clusters were immediately reminiscent of the stimulus material we listened to before the workshop.

That choice within workshops should be framed - So that the learning intentions are delivered. Once we had decided on the simple two note motifs that would form our theme, Robert gave us break-out tasks, that whilst offering creative freedom i.e. develop a second part in harmony with the first, would always feed back into the final piece in a way that Robert had planned for.

Workshopping can be used to teach any style/genre or tradition - Our break out group actually talked a lot about harmony, that might well have been the lesson, it wasn't in this case but I hope you get the picture. Whilst workshopping musical theatre you may have some students looking at a whole class agreed chord progression, looking for opportunities to use inversions to create idiosyncratic bass movements commonly found in the genre, whilst another two groups may be tasked with the composition of two melodies over the same progression, each using a particular interval, aiming for melodies of entirely different character.

The stimulus piece was Ascent by Schnittke.

I did also discover that I am a guitar feedback inducer, maybe I am made of Kryptonite, or something.

References:

Cook, N (2000). Music: A Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford Paperbacks.

#mufu2013: What I learned - Session 1

2013-01-23T16:51:00.003+00:00

Last week, for the first time, representatives from Musical Futures champion schools across the whole of the UK converged on a frankly Kremlin-esque diocese in Leeds for the annual Musical Futures conference.

There was so much to take from the two days, it seems sensible to break it down session by session.

Photographs and videos from both days can be found here.

Session 1 - Keynote: David Price
You always know you are going to get something frank, and honest from David. Much of his address focused on a reflection of 10 years of Musical Futures, which at first was a project, then an initiative, an approach and now could be described fairly as a movement. I believe a third of schools in England now run at least part of their curriculum using the musical futures pedagogies.

Most teachers are well aware of the tiresome merry-go-round of initiative after initiative, where the big thing is AfL for a few years, then focus shifts to differentiation or 21st century skills.

Musical Futures longevity for me is as a result of a few simple factors.

Firstly it was built upon sound classroom research and as such was a ground-up model. I don't know many sectors where research and practice are so disparate as education, this was not the case with Musical Futures. Don't get me wrong, I know there are some fantastic things happening, but I would challenge anyone to argue that there is not a significant voice with an "up there/down here" attitude.

In the sciences for example, research and practice are in essence the same thing. How many schools have proper links with their local universities with teachers acting as researchers and the universities with fellows on the ground as it were.

Secondly at the heart of Musical Futures, is the attention to the traditional disconnect between students experiences of music in and out of school.

Finally, it is impossible to deliver Musical Futures without teaching musically, or as Ofsted would say, music is the target language. The two main pedagogies of Informal Learning and Classroom Workshops are ways of working where teachers play lots and explain little.

At home our students are practically all avid consumers and often creators of music, and yet in many music classrooms they sit behind desks (nothing wrong with this in a non-practical subject) learning from worksheets (you see where I am going here).

David also outlined six imperatives of social learning:

Do it yourself (autonomy)
Do it now (immediacy)
Do it with friends (collegiality)
Do unto others (generosity)
Do it for fun (playfulness)
Do it for the world to see (high visibility)

David is someone with whom I have worked closely over the years, and it was clear to me where his thinking had come from, Much of my own current thinking on education has come from a visit to High Tech High in San Diego, which I have written about often on this blog.

There is always a danger with lists, that they become just that, slogans which are banded about in schools with senior management crying joyously "Riiiiiiiiight" as they tick off there catch phrase check-list proclaiming about just how much the staff know their stuff.

I think the arts are special. There is an inherent freedom within them to do things a little bit differently. The above list sings projects!

David talked about the next steps for Musical Futures and how we can continue to innovate for another 10 years. One area that I intend to focus on is on how Musical Futures can exist in a Project Based Learning framework.

If we are to continue to thrive and grow as a movement (and it really does feel like that, I have never been to a conference with such a sense of shared purpose and community), then we need to think about what next. There were pilots for approaches to singing and music technology which I will discuss in later posts.

The conference was genuinely superb, far and away the best music CPD I have ever had, and there were lots of little nuggets, things you could immediately take away and use with your classes and I intend to share these. But on a more important level I hope to use the next few posts to reflect upon how this fits into the bigger picture of Musical Futures continued evolution, and the challenging vista towards which music education is currently peering anxiously.

Creative Curriculum Design: Where are we now?

2013-01-22T21:23:00.001+00:00

My last post talked about our inspiration from High Tech High

What have we done with this?
In this post I mentioned issues in our Create curriculum with:

Naivety in expectations of students; ability to be self-determinate
Authenticity of enquiries and a lack of clear idea over intentions and content
Shoe horning disciplines (music, media, drama) together
The constant herding of students from one place to another, with limitations on opportunities for students to get to know their teacher limited as a result

The running joke in the Create department for a while now has been: "Can we do the same thing next year?" and the curriculum has been in a constant state of flux as we have tried to work out what works.

We are now in a position where the curriculum is fairly settled and we have made the move from enquiry to project based learning. There is still an element of discovery learning in every module, but these exist within the confines of a clearly defined product and so we can prepare more easily for any unintended but fortuitous (or perhaps advantageous is a better word) outcomes that may arise. The document below outlines the curriculum, with a focus on music and progression across the two year course, and how this feeds into Year 9.

I have looked at it from both a landmarks point of view, in terms of the key concepts that we intend to deliver in each year, and also from the perspective of how each unit develops depth, complexity and range of students' musical responses through a variety of styles, genres and traditions.

Curriculum Overview from Martin

Structurally we have made some changes to the way students move through each year, and I think that we retain an element of student choice, especially in Year 8, whilst allowing us as a team of 6 teachers to see less kids and more often.

Students have 150 minutes of Create each week. In Year 7 they begin in the first term with a more recognisable carousel around the three disciplines, learning key concepts that will be needed for the course i.e. stop motion animation, video/image editing, ensemble & instrumental skills, musical devices, stagecraft, working with scripts etc.

The first project which takes place in term 2 is "CLV Hits". This involves the production of a music video, where students rehearse and record the audio for their track, animate in sync with the audio and choreograph dance routines. These three elements are then edited back together to make the final product. At this stage we are quite tight about the parameters of the product as this is the students' first experience of a project. The tracks are predetermined, so that it does not matter in which order the students visit each discipline. Typically students will spend a block of around 10 hours with teacher working on each element for the video.

In term 3 in Year 7 student have their first opportunity to chose their project from:

Frozen Moments - Making soundscapes and a slow motion (a la Matrix) "moving painting" that captures the most climactic moment from the students' favourite books.

(The project plan can be downloaded here, the full plan is also shared at the bottom of this page)

Radio Play - This project is still being designed but students will study seminal works and create their own radio play.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Students will put together a stripped back production of the play and compose leitmotif to form the musical backing.

Then in Year 8, students can choose their route through the year. Their are two projects that last a whole year (making a film, and making a fitness DVD). This is necessary to give the students time to create work of the quality that meets our expectations. With projects the rule of thumb is do it yourself, then multiply the length of time it took you to do it by ten! There are also two routes whereby students complete a project in each term.

Year 8 create projects from Martin

As a result students see only one teacher each term or in some cases half term in Year 8. We still use the products to give students an insight into works of art outside of their cultural frame of reference, for example Japanese art music plays an important role in the Frozen Moments project. The products that they are making are authentic and clearly defined, though with increasing scope to be creative and present a range of outcomes as they progress through the two years. I am though a firm believer that there is much creativity that is born of constraint so we are not nearly as naive as we were at the outset of the course, where we imagined students might roam free, becoming a film director as the whim took them, then suddenly swap to scoring their film when the wind changed,

The disciplines tend to exist in pairs, so that one does not become the poor cousin in the project, and where synthesis of all three is sensible, these are year long projects.

The one area that still needs most work is in public exhibition. Some projects have involved links to professional composers via Skype or artists coming into school to critique work in progress but this is not yet embedded.

The model is not perfect but it is so much more manageable and effective then our first rambling efforts. In music, Ofsted highlight the importance of regular and sustained music making, and in a year long project, students have an intense burst of music for a term, then less practical music making for the rest of the year. Clearly this is not ideal, and as head of music, I feel uneasy about this to an extent. That said, from the a whole school perspective and head of Create, if I were to ask myself do our kids get a good deal, I would say "Yes they do."

Fozen moments project plan from Martin

Creative Curriculum Design: Our inspiration

2012-08-03T20:23:00.001+01:00

A couple of weeks ago I documented the changes in our Create curriculum in this post:

http://teachingandlearningmusic.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/creative-timetabling-problems.html

In my next post I hope to show how and why we have moved from EBL (Enquiry based learning) to PBL (Project based learning) and share some of the more structural considerations that have had to be made.

I have written a lot throughout this blog about my visit to High Tech High in San Diego with @DKMead, but in particular you might want to look here:

http://teachingandlearningmusic.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/lfhth-learning-futures-visit-high-tech.html

http://lfvisithth.blogspot.co.uk/

If I could distil my learning about PBL from High Tech High, I would bring your attention to a number of drivers. Firstly, the integrations upon which High Tech High is founded:

1. Integration of students - One of the strengths of this model is that teachers are able to manage mixed ability groups so well is that they see less students more often.
2. Integration of head and hand - There is no distinction made between the academic and the vocational, Tom Vander Ark of the Gates Foundation described the school as a "great liberal arts school in disguise" and I know Larry Rosenstock (CEO HTH) is very happy with this description. The importance of the arts and technical skills is of massive consequence as a window onto the world and academia.
3. Integration of school and community - EVERYTHING is exhibited, publicly.
4. Integration of secondary and post secondary education - Here are some remarkable stats:

HTH Outcomes
• 100% HS Graduation
• 92% College Entry
• 73% 4-Year College
• 76% Retention after 4 years
• 35% 1st generation college
• 30% Major in Maths/Science

California Averages
• 50% HS Graduation
• 60% Retention after 4 years
• 17% Major in Maths/Science

The expectations are simple, you will go to college. The implications go beyond the means of my department but beyond these statistics, the quality of students' work I observed was exceptional and it was clear how the arts were integral to every project, even those delivered by non-arts specialists.

NQT advice: Behaviour and the language of choice

2012-08-02T12:57:00.002+01:00

Amongst the Olympics and puppy training that has been my summer so far, I have had little time to blog, but in the last couple of days the issue of behaviour has been blogged about from a couple of different perspectives here and here.

I don't think that anyone can argue that behaviour and learning are inextricably linked, many schools including mine talk about learning behaviours for example Guy Claxton's Rs, whilst some suggest that paying attention and working hard are all that you need.

With reference to the above links, I think the @informededu comment best captures where I stand. I think the patterns of causality are more complex than laying the "blame" solely at either the teacher or the students. In either case it is very easy to fall into a vicious circle where no one wins and therefore no one learns (including the teacher).

As an NQT you will get a lot of advice, I have been told both "Treat every class as if they are your favourites" and "Be an arsehole until Christmas". Whilst it is easy to understand the sentiment and reasoning behind both of these exhortations, actually neither are particularly helpful, especially as you find yourself with a class in front of you in September and suddenly things can feel a little bit lonely.

I work in a school where students are on the whole very well behaved and support is good, but have spent time in other schools where this was certainly not the case. I have worked alongside and been taught by "arseholes" who clearly did not like kids, and spewers of praise that remind me of Zane Lowe (who probably says awesome each time he takes a dump). Neither instil any kind of discipline.

I remember clearly our Art GCSE as we had a completely adorable teacher for Year 10 whose favourite phrase was "love it to death", sadly though she left us in Year 11 due to stress (telling) and was replaced with a frankly murderous sod who began by reading a passage from Ezekiel 21:22 about being at the gates (the work we did with the previous teacher did not meet the criteria for the spec!)

You know what, I learned more with the latter, with the former we would see what we could get away with in the spirit of modern art; Me: "Look Miss I put my mates head in place of the band members of East 17 for my T shirt design, it's post-modern", Teacher: "Love it to death". Oh dear.

That said the latter, convinced me jobs in art were crap and I shouldn't follow my passion at the time and be a graphic designer. Oh dear.

Advice for NQTs

The idea that lesson planning and teacher attitude has an effect on behaviour is TRUE! However the impact of poor behaviour on learning is greater; as an NQT you are starting from scratch so you should focus on behaviour management in your first year or until you feel that things are comfortable.

DO NOT let your mentor or head of department tell you that poor behaviour in the first instance is your fault, it's not your fault, nor is it personal. Children will naturally test a new face, they will seek to determine where the boundary lies. Sadly there are instances where children literally do not care if they get into trouble, but for most this is an attempt to see how far they can go BEFORE they get into trouble.

Find someone who can support you in seeing things through, this should be your HOD or mentor but if this is not working, even office staff can be lifesavers if for example you have a compassionate receptionist like ours (actually I think she just gets sick of me asking for stuff and finds it easier to say yes) who photocopies my detention slips and will get them distributed.

This year I have found it incredibly tough to keep on top of behaviour in my department. My timetable has been pretty hectic and as head of Music and KS3 Performing Arts I have 750 kids to monitor. Next year sadly I have had to hand my home group over to another member of staff and I plan to use the gained time to get on top of department detentions. This year during my run of PPA-less days, I have had to wait often up to 4 days to confront kids after receiving reports of bad behaviour and this breaks my heart, mostly for the teachers in my department who deserve better support from me.

You head of department should be your rock and (as in the stages below) they are a crucial linchpin in the system, but sadly from what I read and have observed over my career this is not always the case. Find someone and use them, there are lots of good willed people out there. Why not share detentions with another NQT? DO cascade things upwards!

Save your praise for things that are really praise worthy. A class should be quite, they should take their bags off their desks, don't congratulate them for doing the simple things, it's their job. Will they thank you for preparing the lesson?

Respond to politeness in kind and model the kind of behaviour you expect.

High expectations is a term that is banded about left, right and centre but it really is as simple as that. The difficulty comes in having the time, support and conviction to keep these expectations and to see things through. Have high expectations, do not let them drop.

At our school we have a clear set of steps for dealing with behaviour and they work when applied consistently within and between classrooms. These are not mine, but I use them.

Two things are crucial here, first is the language of choice (more on this in a bit) and the second is a bit of a get out of jail free card; the idea of a refusal to follow a reasonable request being regarded amongst the most serious of offences. Even if you don't come to work in our school, I think this is something that you can adopt and make clear as an NQT. Make it clear that you expect children to follow instructions, this might seem obvious or churlish to state, but if you an elevate it to have the same import as below, it can be used as a lever.

On the subject of levers, my experience tells me that children can be incredibly difficult, but they can also be manipulated. The language of choice I think is crucial. Here is an uncomfortable truth, there are times when certain children in certain states of mind will simply not do what you want them to do, not matter who you are, NQT or not. You just aren't going to win... for now.

Even in these cases I would suggest that you present choices to the students, but the key is to make it clear that there is a right and wrong choice and that there will be consequences too. Yes, the bullish child might take the wrong path, but you offered them a way out.

Actually, from my experience in the majority of cases when presented with a choice, students will back down, it's not NLP or any of that nonsense, it is just a case of giving them a way to not lose face, and tricking them into thinking its what they want to do as well.

Consequences of Misbehaviour

Each time you fail to meet the expectations of behaviour, you are making a choice. If you choose to behave in a way which is unacceptable then the following consequences will be applied:

STAGE 1

Verbal reprimand by the teacher.

STAGE 2

Verbal reprimand by the teacher and at this point you will also be:

● Instructed to move to another seat

● Asked to stay behind to talk to the teacher at a time of their choice

STAGE 3

If you have chosen not to improve your behaviour you will be put on a detention by your subject teacher and can also expect to be:

● Reported to the Head of Department and moved to a different room to work

● Spoken to by your Learning Manager or Pastoral Coordinator who will consider placing you on report and contacting your parents

STAGE 4

If you have chosen to continue your inappropriate behaviour the sanctions at Stage 3 will be applied and you will incur the following:

● 1 hour school detention

● Parents informed and where appropriate invited into school

If your inappropriate behaviour continues after Stages 1-4 you will be removed from the classroom, your parents contacted and you may be excluded.

Internal or external exclusions will be given for the following behaviours which are absolutely unacceptable:

● Fighting or violence

● Open defiance by refusing to follow a reasonable request from a member of staff

● Swearing at a member of staff

● Possession of drugs or alcohol

● Possession of an offensive weapon

REMEMBER The choice is yours—behave in an appropriate way and avoid the above consequences.

On the power of critique

2012-07-16T23:15:00.004+01:00

This interview was conducted with Charlie a week after a whole class critique session on his composition for the Frozen Moments project. I bumped into Charlie on the corridor and grabbed the opportunity to get some sound bites from him, knowing that he had valued the experience. Charlie had not been prep'd (you can hear me prompt him sometimes) and is around the national average if you believe in CAT scores and seeing students as numbers.

See if you can guess which year group he is in...

None of the qualities that surface from this conversation are the result of any amazing teaching on my behalf. More the protocol we used and the innate nature of Critique to lead to a focus on high quality content.

What strikes me listening back to this is just how powerful his testimony is for a number of reasons:

"I could see..." This hints at a clarity of direction.

"Harsh on content" comes straight to the fore, it is clear that Charlie values having his work robustly challenged.

"So the person doesn't feel like them failing" So failure is important but it must be made safe.

"I'm improving and I haven't even started the work" NOW the aforementioned clarity is crystallised. This is about the best thing I have ever heard a student say. Incredibly perceptive and inspirational for me to hear.

"Then I get the most out of the class... all of the brain power" Wow, here is a statement that says community more perfectly than I ever could.

"We thought we'll probably get away with that" Quality, quality, quality.

Here is the feedback Charlie got from the class, the technical words in bold are the students'. I did rephrase some in terms of sentence structure though.

Feedback from the class:

Good use of silence at the end, try fading out the wind sample.

Try extending the magic sample as it cuts out quite early. Also this could be faded out and made louder.

We love the wind sample being in the piece throughout; the wind sample should also fade in gradually to help build tension.

Think about your choice of timbre on the ostinato, it sounds a little squelchy and should sound more mysterious.

The accelerando works well with that choice of notes in the ostinato and the staccato way that those notes are played. The crescendo should peak at forte earlier and start to fade back to piano to prepare for the silence.

We love the pedal and the way the timbre changes gradually over time. Try adding another A in a different octave later on to help it change more.

Get rid of the word "view" from on the laugh

Oh, Year 7 by the way.

Creative Curriculum Design - The problems

2012-07-16T22:43:00.001+01:00

This year, alongside all of the usual trials and tribulations, I have been particularly pleased with the way that PBL (Project Based Learning) is beginning to be embedded in the department.

"Create" combines the disciplines of Music, Media and Drama and increasingly having been to High Tech High and having made a journey from tentative baby steps of pilots to robust tuning and refining we are beginning to realise the vision we had for Create when we sat at Muffin Mansion (read Longhirst Hall) almost five years ago.

Initially we were incredibly naive and expected to be able to allow the students to be almost entirely self determinate, big mistake! Over time we have learned that choice is OK, provided that it is framed thoughtfully and in a way that encourages independence through a gentle removal of scaffolding as students progress through the key stage.

Aside from ageing (in technological terms) PCs, the biggest barrier we have faced in the last couple of years has been in finding ways to implement PBL in a way that allows for professionally high quality outcomes.

The realisation has been that teachers need to spend more time with less students.

We have two 75 minute periods per week, with 6 classes of roughly 30 on session at once, split between 2 Media, 2 Music and 2 Drama teachers.

In it's original incarnation, Create was basically a carousel. Each class had a Create tutor who was their guide and would introduce enquiries (as they were then; rather than projects) and monitor home learning. Students rotated between the disciplines each lesson and each cycle was punctuated by a generic "Create tutor" lesson related to the enquiry and so learning was transient and often not of the quality we aim for.

A typical unit looked like this:

What would music look like?

View more presentations from Martin.

The enquiries were developed largely to ensure breath of content for the National Curriculum in Music, and other examples were:

What would Beethoven think of rock 'n' roll? Where students learned to perform music from both eras and made short dramatic pieces supposing that Beethoven had time travelled a la Bill & Ted (fine film!)

Can the camera tell the truth? Where students made comic books of still images to tell a story, with a soundtrack.

Looking back, our intentions were noble enough but in reality our enquiry questions were like lubing a steak and hoping to cram it down a National Curriculum shaped straw. We allowed ourselves to become hamstrung by notions of external pressure that were largely non-existent in reality.

The learning was also in two parts, lots of short enquiries or lessons, followed by some making of a product. (More like project orientated learning rather than project based learning)

Another issue was that at the time we felt the need to include all three disciplines in each enquiry which led to some square peg round hole shenanigans and usually one discipline became marginalised with a tacked on role.

Whilst there were some really great lessons, students did not really but in as the things we asked them to create were mostly abstracted from what creative artists produce in the real world. Students perceived little value in them and as a result the enquiries suffered.

The first changes I made the following year when I took over the department were to get rid of bespoke home learning for each enquiry which was unwieldy in terms of monitoring and workload in creating the tasks. Instead students were asked to keep a journal of their learning, reflecting upon what they had learned, how they had been Creative (ICEDIP, more on this below) and including examples of their learning. Students could choose how to keep their journal, for example as a scrap book, or in a song, the idea was to be creative in presenting your response.

I also brought in Geoff Petty's research on the ICEDIP model for creativity to help students understand that creativity is a not a rigid process and can be learned.

Finally, we moved from rotating every lesson to having blocks of four lessons with each teacher, which made much more sense. This has endured to some extent in the first two terms of Year 7, where students need some element of "tooling up" to prepare them for the enquiries ahead.

That was three years ago and Create has continued to evolve. In my next post I will discuss how we have moved to PBL rather than EBL, and how we are dealing with structuring the terms so that we see less students for longer.

Musical Futures: Transition

2012-07-16T17:08:00.002+01:00

The videos below are taken from our Primary transition: "Play Day" which was organised by my fantastic colleague Jo Watson and took place last week. Students in our feeder primary schools had been working on the song "Stand By Me" using lesson plans and resources provided by Jo. The notation is available as a link at the bottom of this post, and was kindly arranged on our behalf by Alex T Y Au, an undergraduate.

The idea was to capitalise on the wider opps and peripatetic tuition happening, and to use the enthusiasm and skill of the music coordinators in the primary schools.

There was also an opportunity to introduce the children to our staff, our students and our Musical Futures pedagogy, based on learning aurally through "informal learning" and "non-formal teaching", and also to build a sense of belonging to the school by working together for the day on our premises.

Students will pick up where they left off in September by using classroom workshops to refine their performance of "Stand By Me" with a segue into "Beautiful Girl" by Sean Kingston, leading to a whole class composition using either the chords or riff as a stimulus.

I have included the lesson plan for their first 75 minute session in September too.

I couldn't be happier with how the day went and am so grateful to Jo in particular but to everyone involved and can't wait to work with these students in September.

Thanks to Emily Segal for the arrangment

75 minute Lesson Plan

Stand By Me Arrangment - Sibelius File

Gallery of Images

SOLO: Part-whole analysis when performing/encountering new music

2012-07-11T20:56:00.003+01:00

“SOLO: Part-whole analysis when performing/encountering new music”

To find out more about Bigg’s SOLO taxonomy go to Pam Hook’s site: http://hooked-on-thinking.com/

There are also some excellent blogs by @DKMead @LearningSpy @Totallywired77 and @lisajaneashes

This is a process I use to help students uncover the functions of the constituent parts of music by asking them to make predictions, take something away and comment on how close the result is to their prediction. It works particularly well when looking at a number of pieces of music from a particular genre or tradition where stylistic conventions can be drawn out from a number of examples.

The ideal is for the students to perform the music but it can be done with recordings, though you will need to use some software to recreate the music so that parts can be muted i.e. Sibelius or Cubase. In this instance I often look for MIDI files of the pieces of music and import them into Sibelius.

I think this process serves to show how the taxonomy is not necessarily linear or a hierarchy, but that we can look at it and use it help students understand a particular piece of content in a way that uses the taxonomy in a bespoke fashion. The end in this instance is that I want students to understand the relationships between parts of a piece of music yet the means i.e. the process leads them through the extended abstract.

The purpose for this method is that in doing so students will be able to internalise the sounds through performance and focused listening. Also listening to their predictions gives me an insight into their existing technical language and their knowledge of both the new music encountered and their awareness of the more fundamental relationships that can be applied to particular musical patterns or devices. The predictions will be particularly difficult for your students to make at first, but they will get better with practice.

Dependent on the ability of your students you choose your involvement in instructing them at each stage of the process.

Step 1: Listen to the music and describe what you hear. Make a list (Factual description only, no critical judgements)

Uni/Multi-structural understanding

Step 2: Break the piece of music down into parts that “belong” together, these may be based instrumental sections in a concerto for example or based on constituent elements i.e. riffs vs melodies in a pop song

Multi-structural understanding

Step 3: Choose a part to leave out of the music. Predict what the music will sound like without that part. For example leave the second violin out of a string quartet.

Extended Abstract

Step 4: Perform or play the music without that part, listening critically.

Step 5: Critically comment on what the music sounded like: how did it change? How close was our prediction?

Relational understanding

Step 6: Compare the whole music (all parts) with the part taken out. Now describe the function of the part, analogies work well here.

Relational understanding

A worked example might look something like this (I would draw the table on the board).

I use this particular song with my Year 7s before they go into bands to learn the song. We perform it first as a class and these are typical answers (We do this is Sept so I can’t find any photos sorry, will put some up when I do it again next year). I try to use their language during the lesson and use this as an opportunity for them to learn the proper terms by crossing out words and adding new vocabulary.

The Ting Tings – That’s not my name

Parts	Describe	Predict if removed	Comment when removed	Function	New words
Chords – Guitar & Synth	Two chords, using simpler version of the bass rhythm.	It will just sound pretty much the same but quieter	It sounds hollow in the middle	The chords are filling in between the lines like colours on a painting
Bass	Same notes played low then high.	Music won’t sound as low pitched.	It doesn’t sound as “beefy” as before.	The bass is like a plate that the rest of the music sits upon.
Vocal melody	Very repetitive and short notes.	More boring.	You can hardly tell what song it is anymore.	This is the ~~catchiest~~ bit.	Hook
Vocal counter melody	More flowing and more like a tune.	It will just sound like the first chorus where it’s not there.	It doesn’t feel like it is going anywhere now	It gives the song a lift by ~~adding more in.~~	Thicken texture
Percussion parts	Mostly follows rhythm of bass.	All the other bits won’t sound like they’re in time	It does sound in time but you wouldn’t want to dance to it any more	The ~~beats~~ are like the engine driving the music on	Rhythms

Critique infographic / bookmark / non-reusable dipstick for your oil well

2012-07-10T23:19:00.003+01:00

If you would like a high-resolution version (5MB) send me a DM on twitter with your email address. @saidthemac

#callofthewildproject How we got here

2012-06-20T23:44:00.001+01:00

So I guess anyone who has read this blog will know that I am a huge proponent of PBL (Project Based Learning) and its that time of year when we throw out the timetable at our school and embark upon some intensive and deep learning.

Last year's one week project is documented here:

This year we have the students for one block of two weeks rather than two blocks of one, and teachers have teamed up and worked incredibly hard to develop a vast array of projects to which the students have been signing up.

These range from creating a Spanish soap opera to creating android apps.

Our project is to compose and release an album of ambient music based on recording of birdsong, and release it on itunes.

This year I am delighted to be working with the sage that is Darren Mead. We started planning the project a couple of months ago. Serendipitously, around the same time Darren and I had been chatting about birds as I was falling in love with a blackbird whose territory included my garden, in particular I loved one melodic motif that he used regularly. After some hard racking of my brain, I realised it is very similar "I say Yeah Yeah" by Georgie Fame. You can hear it singing here, my favourite motif is at around 4:06.

Since we both love the music of Brian Eno, Darren had the idea to compose an album of
ambient music based on the birdsong of species found in the local farms, woodland and water near our school. It was one of those stunningly simple and beautiful ideas that you can;t believe you didn't arrive at earlier. Darren has written an excellent post about getting project ideas here:

Seemingly the project gods agreed, and the blackbird now decided to nest literally 15cm away from my conservatory window. They were part of the family and my wife, son and I took great pleasure in watching the chicks develop; they left the nest just last week.

I have become incredibly passionate about birds as a result of Darren's infectious influence over the last few months and I think this is crucial to any project. At High Tech High teachers are able to bring their passion into the classroom, often from disciplines unrelated to the subjects they teach. I can hear in my minds ear right now the verve with which Bobby Shaddox demonstrated parts to his class in High Tech HIgh Middle for their Rock Opera. Bobby is a Humanities teacher by the way.

So Darren and I went out into the fields and DID THE PROJECT FIRST. We did a twitch in the locale so I could get to grips with the habitats and get to know some of the birds. We then sent our boys to the ice cream parlour with my wife and spent a day composing an (imperfect - more on this once the students have critiqued our first draft) teacher model based on my blackbird's motif. The purpose of this was so that Darren got to know the innards of Cubase and also so we had a model to show the kids.

Our two week project plan is here in truncated form. It is worth noting that there are some "traditional" lessons and that we have two experts without whom we would not be able to do the project at all.

I will share the rubrics we use once we have co-constructed them with the students following the critique of the teacher model.

Finally, based on Adria Steinberg's 6As, here is how we are ensuring that our project will be a high quality learning experience for our students:

Authenticity

The students will find the birdsong increasingly meaningful as they experience the hunt that is a twitch, and learn about the conservation issues surrounding some of the birds and just how unique Cramlington is for some species. We start with a video clip from Springwatch showing how birdsong is coupled with ambient music in airports and shopping centres to create a calm atmosphere and encourage customers to stay longer and therefore spend more. The final album will also be released on itunes through schools record label.

Students will have an authentic audience when they exhibit on the final Saturday of the two weeks at our school's learning festival. They will also be critiqued by delegates at our annual conference and through the project blog:

Applied Learning

The students will be required to apply their knowledge of the birds in the field when recording and cataloguing their recordings, and the musical learning will take place during composition, not after. This is crucial that the project drives the learning, so that the project is the learning, rather than "project orientated learning" where you learn some stuff then make a product at the end. See this video for more clarity here. Students will also specialise in working on the music, the artwork or the sleeve notes which in turn requires self management and organisational skills to be well honed by the end of the project.

Adult Relationships

We have secured the help of two fantastic young men who are avid bird watchers. They are local and have extensive knowledge of the habitats and birds we will see and hear. We could not do the project without Cain and Phil.

Academic Rigour

Students have key knowledge that will be learned and is planned for. We will assess this using quality criteria and rubrics. These will be co-constructed with the students as they critique or models and real world exemplars. Enquiry is key as students are required to go into the field and ask quality questions to further their knowledge of the birds.

Active Exploration

We pretty much do what it says on the tin here. Students will do a presentation of learning at the end of the project too, which will require them to document their learning journey.

Assessment

Students will use a rang of critique protocols to feedback to each other and will be expected to complete multiple drafts of every aspect of the project. Our experts will be on hand for early critiques and conference delegates will help the students tweak their presentations of learning ready for the exhibition on the final Saturday. The students' music will be playing in our Biome on the exhibition day also.

If you're into wildlife our expert Phil's blog is here and @cainscrimgeour blog is here. Both Cain and Phil are exceptional young men with exceptional knowledge.

A response to the mobile debate (amongst other things)

2012-06-11T21:54:00.001+01:00

Andrew Old recently posted on the why allowing mobiles into classroom is lunacy here:

http://teachingbattleground.wordpress.com/2012/06/11/the-insanity-of-allowing-phones-in-class/

This is why I think his argument here is flawed. It was written as a direct comment to Andrew, and so it refers to him as the second person. I have asked him if wants to delete the comment to allow for readability and brevity in the pages so I have also posted the comment here. It got a little long winded so maybe this is a better place for it.

It is interesting that you seem to have a habit of taking a quote and misrepresenting it as in this earlier post re: Francis Gilbert

http://teachingbattleground.wordpress.com/2012/04/10/a-reply-to-fiona-millars-latest-exercise-in-denialism/

I take the quote not to mean that more learning is bad, clearly this is lunacy, but the obvious meaning is that the learning seems joyless, which is bad in my book. On engagement, your weasel word stance is also flawed. Willingham does not discount the importance of motivation, in fact he makes pains to state that without it, learning is inhibited. There is evidence (http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/pdf/The%20Risks%20of%20Rewards.pdf)
to suggest that external motivators instigated by the teacher can work short term, but longer term this damages students’ willingness to learn. I recognise the strengths in this argument, and in the report I cite, the “kefir” experiment seems to be used by proxy for learning. This an area of personal interest to me at the moment as I have perceived a change in the motivation of my students since the adoption of Project Based Learning as one of my teaching methods. My reading around the subject has only just started and my mind is far from made up, though my gut instinct is to support the article.

If we take engagement to mean simply entertainment then yes, this is not desirable. I prefer to take engagement to mean students developing an intrinsic motivation to work and do well as a result of a well designed and well executed curriculum that presents content in a meaningful and purposeful way. My preferred method is project based learning which may or may not include direct instruction as appropriate, though again I know you are not a proponent of project based learning and have Hattie’s effect sizes to post in return here.

My interest in project based learning stems from firstly, my subject (music) which lends itself to working towards a product, where knowledge is acquired through purposeful play on the journey towards this product. Secondly, I was lucky enough to visit High Tech High in San Diego last year and as a school that delivers entirely through PBL in all subjects but Maths, I was awestruck by the quality of students’ work, knowledge and the engagement (see my earlier diefinition) of students with the curriculum content. I really think if you had the chance to see this place you would love it Andrew. You might not come away banging the PBL drum, but the structures in place for staff and students were unlike anything I have ever come across in my admittedly short career. Staff and students expect each other to be exceptional and have protocols for making sure that happens.

I am not best writer and can’t really express or impress the extent to which I found this place is a learning nirvana. For anyone or reading this or if you haven;t already done so, their delightfully clunky website is worth a visit and you can find some startling statistics about the impact of their curriculum design on
their students.

http://www.hightechhigh.org/about/results.php

You write lucidly and argue well Andrew but there is a joylessness here that I sense is a result of you feeling at odds with what you would deem the prominent progressive educationalist view.

Correct me if I am misrepresenting you, but I believe you have previously questioned my professionalism when you said of my use of SOLO:

“If your classes benefit from being given bad ideas about how thinking works, it just makes me wonder what you were doing before.”

We later had a lengthy discussion about the nature of SOLO, you seemed to agree with the statements that thinking is based on knowledge, that we understand new things in the context of things we already know, that we make predictions when encountering new knowledge again based on what we already know. This to me is the essence of how SOLO can be used to observe learning outcomes. I described SOLO of a map for knowledge, you actually corrected me and I thank you for the clarity it gave me in that SOLO can help develop a map of knowledge. At no point in the use of the taxonomy is content knowledge ever abstracted out. SOLO is not used to measure thinking, it is used to measure outcomes or in other words depth of content knowledge.

Personally, I am a little disappointed that when a teacher says that they have tried something with success, that you use your own beliefs and stance to criticise this. I aim to do nothing in my class that serves anything other than the learning of my students. So long as you and your students are doing well, who am I to say that you are wrong? We hold very different beliefs about education I am sure, but I absolutely respect your resolution to educate your students in the way you deem best.

If this is a misrepresentation of the tweet, then I humbly apologise. I have tried to present a clear representation of not just the tweet, but the conversation.

In this post and in my case you mistakenly lambaste what was later qualified as an emotive statement. Of course we should not ban PCs, and of course we should manage their use so that technology is used to serve learning.

As a music teacher I deal primarily in “skills”. In terms of an epistemology of music, this could be describes of knowledge how to. This is where I err from Willingham’s view that factual knowledge precedes skill.

Students are perfectly capable of making music and internalising sounds before they are aware of or acquire the factual knowledge associated with those sounds. There may be some related and elementary factual knowledge such as “this is how to hold a guitar” but that is not directly related to the ability to imitate a phrase for example.

There is an inherent and unhealthy need in western culture to make music into something tangible, which is a result of a traditional hierarchical model applied to music, where the composer sits atop a chain which runs through performer to consumer. The distinction between performer/composer/listener would not be understood in many cultures. There is some excellent research on this the musicologist Nicholas Cook.

By the way I don’t think that project based learning’s requirement for a product is at odds with this observation, as the musical learning is a result of the product, but is not the product itself.

Musical progression is a difficult thing to describe non-musically. Musical Futures has had a massive impact on music education and at its heart is the teaching of music musically. Students experience and internalise sounds first, then learn the factual knowledge associated with this.

As a music teacher, and one who uses a Musical Futures approach, I support the exploration of the judicial use of mobile technology. The potential in the devices seems worth exploration, and the barriers presented are exactly that. They are bad things. They are bad things that we might overcome. The reasons why I think they could be useful are:

Many of these views are supported in the surprisingly excellent Ofsted triennial report into music in schools: Wider still and wider

0 To use as a recording device to demonstrate musical progression musically. Assessment that is musical can not be done on one piece of work but against a portfolio of evidence. This is not teaching for evidence by the way, I teach for learning.

0 Accessing resources such as musical scores, or instructional videos for example. I can’t physically directly instruct 30 students on how to play drums, flute and guitar at the same time. I can if I’m on a video.

0 Music technology is a career path for students, for example mobile devices can use garage band, which is an exceptional piece of software. I can’t afford macs.

This last point is important. I could use other devices to do these things, but they cost money and most students have mobile devices which can already do these things, and by their nature they are mobile, I physically don’t have space to put any alternative technology in my practice rooms.

Let’s not have a knee jerk reaction. Let’s look at something that has potential, but needs to be investigated. Let’s disagree with each other in a way that does not question our ability to do well for our students.

ANDREW'S RESPONSE

The stuff about mobile phones I hope to cover (either directly or indirectly in a future blogpost), however, I will try to deal with the other points.

1) It is not “misrepresentation” to sum up what you think somebody’s opinion amounts to. I directly quoted Francis Gilbert’s words.

2) “joyless” is not an “obvious meaning” in anyone’s book. In fact joy is quite a difficult concept. I tend to view it as the rewarding feeling arising from the exercise of virtues. Obviously it can also mean “happiness” or “pleasure”, but that would fit my interpretation of FG’s argument perfectly. If you have another definition, one that would actually help your point, go ahead and give it, but as things stand you actually seem to be strengthening the case for my interpretation.

3) You don’t actually appear to have stated what the flaw is with my argument about engagement unless it is the straw man that I am against students being motivated. Obviously I want students to be motivated to learn, I just consider motivation to be a means not an end.

4) Rewards and punishment are about desert, not about motivation. That’s what makes them distinct from bribes and threats. I would never seek to justify them simply as motivators, or indeed concern myself too much with manipulating others.

5) I’m not aware of effect sizes for project-based learning, although I do have a few research articles on it waiting to be read. I’m generally against it on the grounds that it tends to involve groupwork and discovery learning, both of which there is good evidence against in most contexts.

6) My objection to SOLO taxonomy is that, if we respect existing bodies of knowledge, we simply have no need for any new system of structures in which to arrange that knowledge. That’s what academic disciplines are, an arrangement of knowledge. SOLO appears to do the same job badly, providing no useful insight and no obvious benefit. The reason I don’t accept anecdotal evidence for it, is because I have heard the same evidence for so many other schemes that are completely contradictory and the only way to sort between them is with things like a coherent explanation and good empirical evidence.

MY RESPONSE

1) Perhaps misrepresentation is the incorrect word in this instance, I do think your interpretation of "more learning = bad" makes seems to make a rather incongruent jump to serve the purposes of the content of your blog. Who would rightly believe that learning is bad? Yes FG may have a stance against private schools that I also find in need of some more coherent argument but to suggest that he finds learning to be bad by proxy seems a little implausible.

You did misrepresent my twitter post though to serve this blog post as I later qualified this as an emotive statement, again clearly I do not believe that PCs should be banned.

2) 3) 4) 5) The use of the word joy I feel is appropriate for such young children. Drill has its place. I am firmly in favour of students learning their times table by rote. Using memory to assist in calculation seems an entirely appropriate way to teach numeracy. I am not so sure about sitting in silence to read though as I fail to see how this maximises the use of the teacher. You do say that the ability of young children to learn of their own accord is no excuse for not teaching them. Guided readings seems a more appropriate way to check understanding.

You qualified that you were being flippant about play in the same post, but my use of the word joy links to my definition of engagement.

I'm going to talk about personal experience here so you might want to just skip past this part. I went to a school where I learned by rote. I did quite well. I have a good memory, this helps. I think the skill that I developed best at school was being able to copy from the board without looking at my page. I honestly think that other than one superb Physics teacher, I could have done without most of the rest and just bought some textbooks. In class I would finish copying out twice as quickly as the rest of the class and then hid that I was finished and messed around. My education was entirely joyless, I took no reward from learning and I was not engaged, I had no intrinsic motivation... and yet I was successful in terms of academic grades.

I am pretty good at maths but fairly artistic and so was told I could not be a graphic designer and was coerced into an engineering degree. I lapped up the maths in the first year but had absolutely no passion for the subject whatsoever. I got 91 for the maths module and 6 for the design as I stopped turning up for those sessions (I doubt I would have done much better though). I was not ready for the work that was required as I had been spoon fed for 7 years. I decided to follow my passion and studied music, later becoming a teacher after taking a community music module and working in my old primary school. I adore my job and count my blessings each day. We cannot be passionate about every discipline and nor should we expect our students to be, but we should find ways to expose the passions of our students. If we do not make learning a reward then this is less likely to happen.

I agree wholeheartedly that motivation is a means and like you I think it something we should aim to instil. If learning is to joyful in that learners experience "the rewarding feeling arising from the exercise of virtues" during the acquisition of knowledge; at this early age then yes play is important in the sense that young children are trained to see learning as a game where learning=winning.

The quote moves from saying that such an over-academic (key word over, not academic) focus may be unsuitable for younger children, and then says that his child benefited from "learning" by doing. At no point does he say that his child learned more in the private school, this is something you have determined by elevating their teaching methods. It is the means that he is talking about and not the ends, the teaching method and its appropriateness for the children, not the amount of learning. Yes, his views seem dogmatic with regards to private schools from what I have read, but to make the bold claim that he believes learning must be bad is a step too far.

Education should be joyful by your definition. Engagement is a virtuous means. My definition of engagement as "an intrinsic motivation, to connect with one's own education as a result of seeing learning and quality outcomes as a reward" does not seem that far away from your stance.

I recognise that with the Learning Futures scheme for example you disagree with their notions of school as base-camp, extended learning relations and school as learning commons. I take issue with your categorisation of engagement as a weasel word because the word is not the problem, rather interpretation of the word and its misuse. Yes learning will not always be nor should not always be fun, nor should we look to entertain our students. However we should absolutely look to find the means to develop our students' intrinsic motivation through a "culture of quality" as Ron Berger would put it, where the work matters and is the reward, and learning is the virtue. My preferred method here is PBL and Critique.

http://www.hightechhigh.org/unboxed/issue6/collaboration/

Again I know as this involves some discovery learning as part of a blend and collaboration you would take issue with this, but having seen it in practice at HTH, and the way that content is scrutinised in a robust manner I am happy to use it. 80% of feedback students receive from peers is wrong. There may be an argument to avoid peer assessment, however students' peer assess informally as a matter of course. Why not try and teach them to be better assessors? Short term you might argue, "Why not teach them some stuff instead?" but my experience leads me to believe that in music less breadth of content covered with greater depth makes students more musical though this is difficult to quantify empirically. I suspect that long term I am doing the right thing for my students in spending curriculum time deliberately using and manipulating the collective intelligence of the class to challenge the quality and depth of content. Already the musical quality of their compositions, their attitude towards redrafting, understanding of and use of technical language is improving.

The above might all seem terribly flowery in its language and not rooted in empirical evidence but these are views that I hold as a result of my own experience and my reading. These are my beliefs. The things we disagree upon is a tension we are never likely to resolve. The issues I take with your posts are technical; the leap to “learning = bad” is too far I think, you used my quote without qualification, you state that engagement is a weasel word when in fact it is the interpretation of the word that is the issue. Your argument against the use mobile technology to an extent relies upon and certainly assumes a homogeny of context.

6) I absolutely respect academic disciplines and their inherent differences. I am a musician and I find it difficult to accept that non music specialists can make sound judgments on the quality of a lesson in 10 minutes in an inspection for example. The use of SOLO should bedone in context. It does not for example suppose that making abstract generalisations of a quite simple rule is higher order then understanding complex relations of causality: For example: 2,4,6,8 – What is the next number the nth term=(n-1)+2 therefore the next term is 10 would be classified as extended abstract. However clearly this is not deeper content knowledge than understanding and articulating how the Treaty of Versailles was a cause of World War II which would be classified as relational.

What SOLO does is give you a shared language of learning; it helps you to form a map of content knowledge (again thanks for your wording). In a more discrete context it helps students understand how they might be able to use their new knowledge. It does not exist to supplant the existing bodies of content knowledge. I find it useful to plan questions. Many others find it useful to signpost a way for their students to display deeper learning outcomes with discrete curriculum content.

I absolutely disagree that it abstracts knowledge from the picture or that it presents an incorrect model of thinking. It is used to measure depth of content knowledge.

Hattie says it is a “defensible method of teaching material” here: http://t.co/mFBTqccb though without effect sizes. He also uses it to measure depth of student learning here: http://t.co/h0GLQndi

There may not be a need for it, but if it works in your context and helps why not use it? A bit like mobile technology.

Article on Teachmeet for High Tech High unboxed

2012-05-17T21:57:00.001+01:00

UnBoxed: online [ Current Issue ]

Keyword Poker - Revision

2012-05-10T20:21:00.001+01:00

I do despair at the phony academic listening paper on the GCSE music courses. We use AQA at our school as the exam carries little weight (only 20%). I actually prefer the Edexcel paper which requires proper appraisal of music to an extent but then being content bound by the set works and the greater weighting of the exams has led us to stick with AQA.

We focus (and rightly so in my opinion) on getting the students really good scores on their coursework or controlled assessment or whatever you want to call them, and then the exam can take care of itself with less pressure. This has been successful in the past so fingers crossed for this year again.

In the run up to the exam season I thought I would share a revision technique that I use for music but is easily transferable to other subjects.

Keyword Poker - (You can now download the cards here)

Yes I really do despair that the curriculum for the AQA GCSE is basically a list of keywords but here is doing some pretty intense revision.

I have a pack of cards where the areas of study correspond to the suits so for example Texture & Melody would be the equivalent of hearts. Each card has a keyword or a number of keywords printed in the middle, the first letter of each keyword corresponding to the numbers on proper cards. So for example you could hold a card onto which is printed:

Texture & Melody

Polyphonic/Contrapuntal

This card could either be played as a P or C of Texture & Melody, like a 5 of hearts. I have multiple words on their to allow for more combinations of letters to make the game flow faster (more on the way we play in a bit). There is also the sheer number of words that kids need to remember which would mean a deck of a hundred or so cards as well as there being some duplicity in some of the words where they have the same meaning or are closely related.

We play As are high, so a pair of Bs (i.e. Bitonal and Blue notes) is stronger than a pair of Cs (i.e. Crescendo and Canonic). After that it basically follows the ranking system in Poker so a flush is obtained by getting five cards from the same area of study and a straight is made by getting cards with subsequent letters from the alphabet i.e. (Leitmotif, Monophonic, Natural Minor, Ostinato, Pianissimo)

We play Texas hold 'em rules and use Haribo (other jelly sweets are available but why would you?) as our currency.

To play a hand students must be able to define every key word that they are using, ideally musically and using their instrument or their voice. After each hand, we look at cards they did not play because they were uncertain of the definition; you can bet the next time that card comes up the students are able to define it.

Hope you find this useful in some way. Could the areas of study be Science modules with key terms or different acts from a play and important words or characters? The biggest issue I have is getting the kids not to eat their money before the end of the game.