Once again, it’s difficult to find any particular theme that unites the posts in this week’s reading roundup. Two of the posts focus on the work of classroom music teachers, one looks at the training available from Guildhall Connect and another investigates whole school assessment systems and their impact on musical learning.
Anna Gower: Key words – “caught not taught”?
Anna has been hosting a great blog for years but she’s now created a dedicated site for her music education reflection. Live less than twenty four hours and she’s already posted a must-read article looking at the ‘caught not taught’ approach to keywords in Musical Futures: Just Play.
Steven Berryman: Connect CPD
This post isn’t new but it falls into the ‘new to me’ category and is certainly worth a read. I found it particularly interesting since the Connect programme played a significant role in the development of the Musical Futures Classroom Workshopping approach. I particularly like that Steven highlights the opportunity to take notes after each session as being valuable. As he rightly points out, “reflecting on the process is something we teachers seldom have enough time to do”.
John Finney: Year 9 Katie on assessment in music
This post from John Finney shows that school leaders haven’t fully heeded the advice of Robin Hammerton when he asked that “as national curriculum levels disappear, I’d ask you respectfully not to replace them with another set of numbers”. Schools have introduced a variety of new (or old…) assessment systems “that may not be very helpful to a child’s musical development and progression”. It is refreshing, therefore, to see a Year 9 pupil provide her point of view.
Teaching Musically: Diary of a music teacher
This is a series of posts rather than a single article but is well worth reading as a series – a music teacher has chronicled a ‘week in the life’ of a music teacher. The story should be familiar to anyone who has taken on the life of a classroom music teacher and it’s reassuring to see that the challenges are similar regardless of which school you teach in or who you are.