Sep 24 2009
Scottish Learning Festival
I was at the Scottish Learning Festival in Glasgow yesterday. A very long day, but great for picking up ideas, resources and inspiration as well as meeting and networking with others.
Tag Archive 'Teaching'
Feb 14 2009
Climbing the steps
It’s February break in Edinburgh and I have been back to Preston Street a couple of times, covering in a P2 class. It was a first for me, although the music workshops frequently take place in P2 classes. I have to say that I really enjoyed it and hope that I get the chance to work with them again.
I have also been covered in a P6 class at St. Joseph’s RC school on the other side of the city. It was a bit of a drive over there in icy conditions.
At RSAMD’s Musicworks meanwhile, the shape of the team, with three new tutors including myself, is getting into a rhythm.
I have been focusing on teaching the children scales that relate to the music that the children are learning from the instrument tutors. The children all play different instruments — mostly guitar, but also fiddle and piano accordion — so I was searching for a simple way to communicate the concept of tonal steps that they could all relate to.
Luckily I have been teaching in the theatre space in the Craigmillar Arts Centre and this has its own set of steps to access seating in front of the stage. These steps are shallow and broad and lend themselves very nicely to a physical representation of scales. So our sessions have ended up with the children walking slowly up and down them, firstly chanting the names of the notes (”Octave!”), then having some of the children play a scale while others walk up and down chanting or singing the notes. Finally, we have a game of guess the note — someone plays a note and then plays a note a step or two up or down from the given note and those on the stair have to try and work out which is the new note.
It has been pretty pleasing to see how well they have taken to this and I can see how it will translate over to standard written musical notation.
Photo by marielito, published under Creative Commons licence.
Sep 23 2008
Traditional music CPD
Following encouraging discussions with other teachers, I have been looking further into the possibilities of music in the classroom and at what is involved in being a music specialist in Primary schools generally.
As a traditional musician, I was taken by an article I read on a programme of traditional music (sometimes called folk music, but there are subtle distinctions) in schools that is run in the Borders. A few years ago I stood in as a tin whistle tutor for Fèisean nan Gàidheal in a programme they ran in East Lothian and was quite taken by the possibilities. The whistle is a simple, cheap, robust and accessible instrument that can lead to music making fairly readily.
There is also a healthy Scottish cultural identity in some schools I have been to, with Burns songs featuring, visiting bagpipe chanter specialists, Scottish country dancing and so forth. This isn’t everywhere, nor at all times, but can form a vibrant backdrop to everyday school life.
With this in mind, I was keen to sign up to a CDP course run through MusicLeader at The Sage in Gateshead. This is an organisation aimed at promoting professional development for music providers and is funded by the Arts Council in England. The course is The Teaching of Traditional Music in Schools – Folk CPD day and what particularly drew my eye is that some of the tutors are from the highly influential Traditional Music degree course at Newcastle University and are involved with the successful Folkworks project, which all adds up to a lot of experience in this area.
So I am really looking forward to this and hope that I will get some ideas on how to bring my different experiences together. It will be an early start to drive down from Edinburgh though, so I’ll also be looking for other CPD events closer to home.
Image by Daniel Fernandez from Wikipedia Commons.
