One of the things to love abut our particular subject is the way that there can always be something that stops you in your tracks and make you say “wow”. I had just such an experience a few weeks ago when I saw a video showing pupils from Two Rivers School performing at the Music Mark Conference. It was a solid performance and clearly a fantastic opportunity for the pupils. What really impressed me, however, was the fact the Two Rivers is a special school, the sheer delight from their teacher, Gail Brindley, and the passion from the staff at Make Some Noise who had worked with the pupils to make it happen.
You can watch the video here.
While it’s evident that a lot of hard work, careful planning and excellent teaching went into realising this production, there’s also a simplicity to the approach that appeals to me. When I watched Make Some Noise’s case study (here) about the project, it became apparent that some of the technology they used was widely available to schools. GarageBand on Macs and iPads seeming to have been one of the solutions that pupils enjoyed most.
In supporting statemented pupils, I’ve always sought to make sure that the staff supporting them felt able to do so. I’ve tried various ways of doing this from writing documents highlighting ‘best practice’, running ‘musical literacy classes’ for staff, inviting teaching assistants to extra-curricular activities and taking a few moments out of a lesson to teach the adults too. It’s certainly true that I’ve made use of technology to support inclusion but, having watched these videos, I have to admit that I’ve got some room for improvement here.
For this reason, I’m really looking forward to tonight’s MufuChat on the topic. I hope that you’ll join us on Twitter at 8.30pm (BST) with the hashtag #mufuchat For those of you less fond of Twitter, maybe try the pre-chat on the Peer to Peer network.