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Teacher and Musician Challenge 11

Teacher and Musician Challenge 11 - plan in soundIn Music in Schools: Promoting Good Practice, Ofsted published a guide for observing music lessons. One sentence in this guidance was particularly welcome to me since it acknowledged the importance of teachers musically preparing themselves for lessons.

How well has the teacher prepared him/herself musically, before the lesson, so that these learning intentions are conveyed to pupils musically?

This week’s challenge looks at taking this idea to the extreme.

The challenge: plan in sound

Just for a once, spend your entire planning and preparation time mastering the musical material that you want the pupils to learn. Have a think about the pointers in Get Fussy and make sure that you have several different versions of the material up your proverbial sleeve. If it’s a composition task, take the time to compose something yourself. Again, be fussy, focus on small details and approach the musical preparation for this lesson with the same attention to detail as you would a performance.

It’s impractical to put this much dedication into the musical preparation for every lesson that you teach but getting really fussy with it on this occasion should help you to think about your musical preparation in future.

Being musically prepared, even ‘rehearsed’, for a lesson is important and you’ve even got the mighty(?) Ofsted to back you up with this!