The wonderfully useful application called ‘Snippy’, which can be downloaded free from this link allows any section of any screen to be captured with little more than a right click of the mouse - an ideal tool to add visuals to your presentations.
Thanks to Steve on the Shropshire Education blog for this one.
I have made a career doing things that weren’t even invented when I graduated from high school 40 years ago. It will be the same for today’s graduates, only on a sharply accelerating timeline. Much of what I learned in the classroom is obsolete or, at best, only marginally useful. What has made a difference in my life has been the ability to learn as I go, to adapt to new ideas, to have the courage to take risks, and to feel confident I will be able to perform and successfully meet the challenges of new situations. These skills I learned through participation in band and drama. - Fred Behning retired from IBM Corporation after a 32-year career that included assignments in systems engineering, product development, management, and customer technology briefings, and is still an IBM consultant. A life-long musician, Fred plays oboe and English horn in the Williamson County Symphony Orchestra and the Austin Symphonic Band.
This extract has been reproduced from the website of an American Music Association - The National Association for Music Education
Try this online glossary to support music groups from KS2 level and onwards.
Stokesay Primary School presented an excellent concert this week which surely shows them to be in the forefront of muscial inclusion as they showcased a policy of opportunity for all.
With the support of colleagues from the Shropshire Music Service, Dot Atkins, David Glossop and Glenn Pollard, the staff and children of the school presented a programme listing over 90 children sharing with parents their progress over the last few terms in vocal and instrumental music.
Children sang and played trumpets, tormbones, cornets, recorders, flutes, clarinets and guitars showing off their achievements since beginning lessons in September 2006 or for some, 2005.
Musical materials had been carefully selected for the instrumentalists to show the progress made from beginners to more experienced ensemble work. The children who performed are just a representative sample of musicians in the school. While all the performers gave of their best and performed with enthusiasm, i must single out Daniel Meikle who sang and accompanied himself on the guitar. He showed great confidence and musical control as, alone, he faced the audience armed only with an acoustic guitar. Well done, Daniel.
The choir sang some excerpts from a musical they have prepared for an area musical collaboration. Again a wonderful opportunity for small rural schools to get together to provide opportunities for creativity for their children.
Congratualations to all children and staff.
Notes for the first (yellow) level and the second (green) level of Music Explorer are available as pdf files as follows:
A few places left on the music and mathematics course on Tuesday 23rd January 2007 in Shrewsbury. The morning course will explore the use of patterns in music and mathematics through a wide range of practical activities, also looking at higher level thinking and will have direct application to the creative classroom. Contact the Shropshire Advisory Service for further details.
Post-course note: The course provided some good practical composition work which has been recorded onto CD and copied for course members. Materials used on the course are available on my Digitalbrain site at this link
The course will be repeated next year - watch this space for details.
Following recent work at the Sir John Talbot School and Technology College, colleagues might find the following summary very useful of the main characteristics of Assessment for Learning - link
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
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