Music for Teachers

Welcome to the ‘Music for Teachers’ blog. The ‘Music for Teachers’ website is at www.m4t.org

Andy Davis asks if any Shropshire schools are attending the Young Voices event at Birmingham - if you are attending please leave a comment and contact for Andy below this posting.

“Do you know of any schools attending “Young Voices” at B’ham on Thursday? We’ve been for several years now and it is well worth attending.
Andy Davis (Clunbury)”

Friday December 1st 2006 sees the launch of the Shropshire initiative to begin to support the Secondary National Strategy in teaching and learning in Music at Key Stage 3.

All music departments in Shropshire have been invited to attend at the Shrewsbury Training and Development Centre (1:15pm - 4:00pm) when the strategy will be introduced by Keith Havercroft (School Improvement Adviser - Music and e-Learning - Shropshire LA), Margaret Lloyd (Head of Creative Arts - The Marches School and Technology College), and Ken Lumley (Head of Music - Meole Brace School and Science College).

Colleagues will be issued with, and guided through, the resources and briefing DVD and will engage in representative examples of the support materials as they begin to see the context and rationale for the planned changes to the Key Stage 3 music curriculum.

Further details will be posted after the event.

As a result of some work I’ve recently undertaken with a primary school, it reminds me that I placed some time ago on the website a series of ideas for getting started to support clarity of learning objective when teaching composition. While these starters are not fully formed lessons they may be none the less useful for teachers who are lesson clear about the direction to take to support composition. Although the National Curriculum (for music) has been around for nearly 10 years I think the area of composition is very much disregarded, while the national debate centres on vocal work.

Feel free to contact me for further help with composition.

The updated Music manifesto was published recently and arrived on my desk last week. The details can be seen via one of the above ‘page‘ links. The manifesto website is available here

Please draw your KS4 student’s attention to the revision materials on the BBC website at the following link

A new blog designed for GCSE students in Shropshire has been launched in partnership with the Music Department at Rhyn Park School and Performing Arts College (St Martins, North West Shropshire) and is currently under development. Any schools in Shropshire wishing to join this on-line community should contact me to discuss the level of access you wish your students to have. The aim is to build an active Music GCSE community where students can communicate on music issues with other students facing the same learning issues.

National training takes place on November 9th and 10th of the new initiative for the National Strategy specific to Music at KS3. 

 The launch for Shropshire Secondary Schools will be for all secondary music staff on Friday December 1st 1:15 - 4:00pm at the Shrewsbury Training and Development Centre on Racecourse Crescent, Monkmoor, Shrewsbury.  At this launch the new materials will be available for all schools and will be subject to explanation and discussion.  A strategy for ongoing support will also be discussed.