Select a KS3 music lesson you have recently taught.

Think about the type of activity that was included in this lesson and consider its potential for promoting pupils’ creative thinking.

• Did this activity present the pupils with a musical challenge that captured their imagination?
• Did it give them a clear purpose for their work (i.e. was it directed towards achieving an objective)?
• Did it offer them scope to produce something that was original for them (as a pupil or as a class)?
• Is their work leading to something of true value in meeting its purpose (i.e. will it do the job)?

Make a note of your thoughts, and plan and try developments in your next lesson. If there are longer-term implications for your planning, also note these and begin to find ways of making changes.

Consider the previous points relating to performing, listening and reviewing and evaluating skills.

Now consider your Key Stage 3 schemes of work overall. Where would you place your department against the criteria below in terms of creative opportunities for:

• performing?
• listening and reviewing and evaluating?

Development: As you work through the unit, consider what short- and longer-term steps you could take to move your department further along the progress scale in respect of creative performing and creative listening and appraising, in addition to the area of composition.

Consider any Year 7 class that you teach.

How much do you know about the musical learning and experience of each of the pupils in that class, not just that obtained from primary school but from other areas of their lives?

Are there opportunities for them to talk about what they have done and what they have learned elsewhere?

What opportunities have your lessons offered them to draw upon this learning and experience when working on something ‘new’?

Who else can you talk to, either in school or in the wider local community, to find out more about the community music-making activities that KS2 pupils may take part in?

You may find information about existing or potential music-making opportunities, nationally or in your local area, by visiting:

• www.musicmanifesto.co.uk;
• www.musicalfutures.org.uk;
• www.youthmusic.org.uk.

Select a lesson you are about to teach that introduces new ideas to the pupils.

Adapt the lesson plan to include:

• an alternative use of music that enables pupils to use prior musical knowledge and skills;
• an alternative use of non-musical stimuli to fire imagination;
• an example of you as teacher, or the pupils, modelling the creative process.

Development: You can find out more about effective starters in the training materials Pedagogy and practice: teaching and learning in secondary schools, Unit 5: Starters and plenaries (DCSF 0428-2004 G) with supporting video exemplification from a range of subjects on the DVD (DCSF 0445-2004 GDVD).

You can also find out more about the processes of modelling in Unit 4: Modelling in music.

Select one of the next units or activities that you are due to begin with a class.

Consider how you might promote a more creative approach from the pupils by using one of the strategies described above, or another that you have drawn from elsewhere.

Plan to include that strategy effectively in the appropriate lesson.

Development: When delivering the planned lesson, monitor pupils’ responses relative to your previous expectations and reflect on the impact the changes have had on pupils’ learning and achievement.

Select one of the next units or activities that you are due to begin with a class.

Consider how you might use one of the above strategies for structuring group work to improve the quality of talk, especially where pupils are listening to or evaluating music.

Plan to include that strategy effectively in the appropriate lesson.

Development: When delivering the planned lesson, monitor pupils’ responses relative to your previous expectations and reflect on the impact the changes have had on pupils’ learning and achievement.

In any unit of work, look at a composing or performing activity that you have planned.

Identify where you can expect pupils to ask ‘What if …?’ questions so as to speculate, challenge conventions and take risks in this work. While learning objectives still need to be met, these questions should lead to new musical discoveries and learning: ‘What if …?’ questions are not designed to simply reinforce the primacy of existing conventions. Rather, they should encourage pupils to challenge conventions and seek alternative solutions.

Now identify (a) the time allowed for these; (b) the strategies you will use to ensure that pupils' work allows them to be imaginative and original, yet remains purposeful and results in something of value; and (c) how you will enable pupils to recognise where their creative learning has taken them, and how to share this with others in the class.

Development: Adapt the unit to accommodate your ideas, then teach it and monitor the impact of the strategies used.

Consider the range of musical skills you require of your pupils in Key Stage 3, and identify the sorts of challenges that you are setting within your schemes of work.

Is there a range of challenges?

Are pupils aware of the challenges being set and do they understand the creative skills that they will need to meet them?

Take a unit of work that you are due to begin next, and look closely at the learning objectives for both the unit and individual lessons. Note brief answers to these questions.

Do the objectives merely state what pupils will do (i.e. activities), or do they make explicit what pupils are intended to learn?

Are there objectives for creativity or thinking, as well as for music?

Are the objectives clear about the types of musical challenge involved?

Do they indicate what kinds of learning and thinking will be required to meet challenges?

Development: In the light of your responses, refine the unit and lesson objectives to address these issues. Plan to repeat the process with other units.

Watch Video 3b which identifies freedoms and constraints in a lesson on the conventions of blues music. Notice how the teacher is explicit about the language and how the issue will impact on the pupils’ own work.

Identify the specific freedoms and constraints that you have built into the challenges within a unit of work you are currently teaching. These could relate to any of the following: time allowed, scale of outcome, choice of musical materials, resources, style or genre, starting points or tasks.

Now consider the following questions: Are freedoms and constraints clear in your planning? Are they clear to your pupils? Is the balance between them such that pupils can be focused and engaged, while allowing them to make choices about their methods and direction? Is the work likely to result in a range of outcomes that demonstrates pupils’ imagination and originality?

During a lesson in which your pupils are involved in an individual or group activity, try asking questions based on the principles of progression and quality described above.

For example:

‘So you’re working on … but tell me what you think makes a good…?'

‘How do you think you’ll know when you’ve got it right?’

‘What do you think makes your work original?’

Pupils’ responses to these sorts of questions can be very revealing. If pupils were unclear in their answers, consider the possible reasons for this, and how you might amend your planning or teaching accordingly.

Take a performing activity similar to the ‘REGGAE BEAT: basic task’ above that you plan to use with a class in the near future.

Adapt it so that it is more like the enriched task by adding a series of thinking challenges.

Having used the new version with pupils, consider the impact on their motivation and learning.

With a colleague, plan a lesson. Ask the colleague to observe your teaching with a specific brief to focus on the impact of opportunities within the lesson for pupils to engage in exploratory talk.

Ensure that you have time to review the outcomes with your colleague.

Development: You can read more about the use of talk in Section 1 (Speaking and listening) of Literacy in music (DCSF 0054-2004G)