As a teacher, I see myself primarily as a problem solver: an explorer of strategies to facilitate light-bulb moments. Over the course of a teaching career that has spanned nearly thirty years those problems and strategies have been many and varied. As an NQT in 1986 I was bitten by the teaching bug at a high school in a West Yorkshire mining town in the wake of the miners’ strike. Challenging environment, but mercifully brilliant staff from whom I learnt a lot. Problem: survival! Strategy: hone classroom management skills at breakneck speed. My next “teaching” role involved supervising groups of undergraduate students as I completed my own postgraduate studies at Cambridge. What can I say? Strategies of an entirely different order!
The vast majority of my teaching career, however, has been happily spent exploring music with ‘A’ level students, first at a college in the South of England before I became Head of Music at an FE College in the North West. My mantra: “Never be afraid to ask and if you still don’t understand ask again! If I explain it once and you don’t properly understand, we have wasted our time. If I explain it again and the penny drops, we have made progress”. (That’s not a very catchy mantra.)
My mantra was fine when I arrived at the college in 1996 and enrolled six students. Even with the best will in the world it was no longer tenable by 2005 with nearly one hundred students studying ‘A’ level Music and/or Music Technology. Groups were big with a wide cross-section of students: twenty students per group from a variety of backgrounds was the norm. I spent a lot of time seeking out appropriate resources that would ensure proper understanding and guaranteed progress. Problem: a lot of the music history and analysis materials I encountered were either too superficial to be of any real use for the purposes of detailed essay writing or far too “hard-core analysis” for ‘A’ level students to understand. Alongside the lack of appropriate materials was the fact that the written paper tends to be the part of the course where a contingent of students, for whatever reason, struggle. As far as writing about music is concerned even the most gifted musician might struggle to get off the starting blocks. Strategy: I found myself writing 99% of my own resources, a gut reaction to what I felt the students needed as we went along.
Producing resources that are engaging and that ensure real understanding with plenty of scope for differentiation is time consuming. Hence this website! So, what can you expect?
First and foremost, what I want to avoid is an initial encounter with something (be it a concept or a piece of music) where a student goes through the motions of learning but without having truly understood that concept or assimilated that information. Proper understanding and guaranteed progress requires that the information “sticks” in sufficient detail so that a student can pull on it as and when required. As I write this I’m thinking “Isn’t this how we all learn? I can’t go public with this!” But, all too often, this simply doesn’t happen.
How did I sell it to my students? “We all hate that time, don’t we, leading up the exam when we have revision to do and we are trying to make sense of everything we have covered and actually, we feel overwhelmed? (I remember this feeling well!) If we assimilate something well enough on ‘first touch’, believe me, the job of revision will become increasingly redundant.”
With this in mind:
1) The resources in the “Learning Bundles” tend to be lengthy and detailed and students will find them time-consuming. No quick fixes I’m afraid! What the resources will do is lead them through a step-by-step process in order that they will assimilate information and understand challenging concepts in a way that will hopefully “stick”. (Thereby, ideal to help that student who needs a bit extra, or who has missed contact time OR to set if you aren’t around.)
2) The resources contain study tips and strategies, which can be edited out if you feel they are not appropriate. Whilst leading students through the process of assimilating material the activities also encourage them to stop and take stock of the learning process: “Hey, this is what understanding is”. We frequently spend time in class discussing “strategy” I am always amazed that there are those who think that they can approach their ‘A’ levels in the same way they approached their GCSEs. We talk about this! It’s also my impression that ‘A’ level students are always in a crashing hurry (box ticking!). Who wouldn’t be with three or four subjects to contend with, a part-time job….a social life….? All the more reason to consciously hone their study skills.
3) A focus on that difficult hurdle where we translate what we understand about music into writing about it. I can’t think of many students who positively enjoy writing essays. I wonder why? The Learning Bundles contain many activities that break writing about music into bite-size chunks, with a focus on vocabulary (not just musical vocabulary) and questions that encourage your students to analyse model answers. I think what I call “modelling” on a regular basis is important. For those students who really struggle with writing, I have found that a constant drip feed in this respect is essential. The materials are designed to help students soak up a lot of useful terminology and phraseology that they can call upon at the appropriate moment.
4) Just as modelling is important, so is what I call “circling around” the information. The resources are grouped into “Learning Bundles” that are logically ordered. While resources can be purchased and used individually, later resources do re-visit and re-use information they have hopefully assimilated earlier on in the learning bundle.
5) I hope that you’ll find that there is a real focus on differentiation. We all encounter a wide spectrum of ability levels, particularly in Music. While catering for well-grounded students I am adamant that I don’t want to leave anyone behind.
6) The resources do in some places invite an emotional response to the music. I want the contingent of students who perhaps see the history paper as a dry academic part of the course, side-lined in favour of performing or composing, to form ideas and opinions about the works they are studying and some sort of emotional response is good. I also try, wherever possible, to make the materials feel relevant. We often, for example, when looking back at the cultural and social context of the composers we are studying, find ourselves comparing how our current social and artistic experiences and expectations influence what and how music is made as well how we “consume” music today. It is important to remember that composers are human beings too. The resources are conversational in tone and occasionally my slightly ridiculous sense of humour surfaces. (Please feel free to edit!) Having said that, I hope that you and your students have fun with these resources….with lots of light-bulb moments!