My main goal is to enthuse students by allowing them to select the music that we study. I then identify what skills and vocabulary may be mastered through each song choice.

I assess depth of cognition in favour of direct skill demonstration. This is sympathetic to the subjective nature of music in which technically simple songs can often be the most beautiful.

Curricular Aims

• To promote confidence via pedagogy and a positive yet reflective classroom climate.

• To promote independence via differentiation strategies and student voice.

• To provide students with the practical skills they need to access music on all levels via contextual learning.

• To be inclusive of all students by providing scaffolding for those who are underconfident, while promoting creativity and a professional online presence for extension students.

• To enable meaningful assessment that is sympathetic to a wide variety of student backgrounds.

The What and the Why!

This music education course consists of a free, unified music curriculum and several online resources for year 1 to 9. It can be used or adapted to suit any demographic or local educational expectation. The curriculum and resources will be updated with new material as I interact with different year groups and try different approaches in the classroom. Here is a brief summary of how the curriculum works:

• A song or piece of music is selected, either via student preference, or because I see value in a certain song.

• I extract age relevant learning objectives and vocabulary from the selected music. A list of possible learning objectives can be found below but may vary in content and quantity depending on the musical choice. All objectives directly relate to the song to provide students with context. Instrumental literacy skills ensure that students are always within reach of the basic knowledge they need to progress.

• I create a myriad of clear, easily understood resources on the song page. This includes colour-coded key warm ups, links to instrumental literacy slides, modelled objectives via YouTube Shorts, video based rhythm maps via FL studio, vocabulary highlights, chord charts, and colour-coded melodic maps. The resources can even be viewed using smaller mobile devices.

• I ensure that inclusion is prioritised and differentiation is vast. As all resources and objectives are featured on a single page with difficulty levels, students may self-differentiate by attempting harder or easier objectives. Since all objectives are based on a single song, they are all related, promoting group performances that mix and match objectives. Further more, every objective features a creative extension activity with some composition tips. Extension students may use or combine the tips, or create musical ideas of their own.

• Assessment is frequent and entirely formative to avoid taking a narrow snap shot of student progress with tests. I use an automated tracker to track how many objectives have been demonstrated by each student, and to what cognitive depth. Students may succeed by specialising in one instrument or by spreading their skills across many since my assessment method features a difficultly based threshold for each year group.

• Extension students in secondary school will be granted the opportunity to create their own website and document their independent study of music that they love. A guide as to how to achieve this is contained on my site, featuring a clear taxonomy that students may follow independently. Refer to the KS3 Music Education Hub to explore this avenue.

Examples of Resources Viewed on Different Devices

Instrumental Literacy Examples

Objectives and Assessment

I have made a great effort to avoid music assessment becoming a burden for teachers and students. I have used more complex assessment systems in the past but I believe that using a simple taxonomy consisting of engage, demonstrate and explore works efficiently. As our learning objectives are grounded in experiencing real world music, I wanted to avoid fixed assessable skills that may inhibit enjoyment and creativity. Thus, the students are assessed on their greatest progress with any single learning objective which also allows for a variety of different young musicians to succeed. A breakdown of each level in the taxonomy can be found below:

• Engage - The student is making an attempt to achieve the learning objective. This may be an effort to sing or play part of the music but the attempt may fall short on rhythm, timing or accurate pitch.

• Demonstrate - The student accurately performs the section of the music they are working on (the learning objective). Of course, this may contain minor errors or a slightly slower tempo than the original.

• Explore - The student creates original music based upon the learning objective with intention. This is subjective but may include changing pitch, rhythm or chords with intention and purpose. I always provide advice at this stage but communicate with students that they should feel free to break the rules if their ears desire to do so!

Since we are using real-world musical examples, learning objectives will vary. The tables below highlight potential skills featured in learning objectives by age. Other learning objectives are possible depending on song nuances.

My main goal is to enthuse students by allowing them to select the music that we study. I then identify what skills and vocabulary may be mastered through each song choice.

You will notice that each objective displays a challenge level in the resources. This level indicates what age range the objective is suitable for. This is of course a suggestion, as AFL may suggest that a certain group are more or less capable than other groups even within year groups. The suggested age ranges are featured below:

• Easy - Years 1 - 3

• Moderate - Years 3 - 5

• Hard - Years 5 - 7

• Extreme - Years 7 - 9

I assess depth of cognition in favour of direct skill demonstration. This is sympathetic to the subjective nature of music in which technically simple songs can often be the most beautiful.

Possible Objectives by Instrument Type

Resources