KS3 Music

Creating a portfolio of evidence

Specialist musicians can model the processes and skills of music live, but recorded examples that show expectations of musical outcomes can be equally effective in enabling pupils to understand the quality of work they can achieve. Departments should create a portfolio of evidence, with examples of pupils’ work showing outcomes at and beyond expectations for each unit of work.

Recordings of most classroom work are probably already taken: in order for these to be used effectively with pupils during lessons as models to work towards, the department should agree at least three pieces for each unit that demonstrate key features of the expected outcomes.

This will:

• enable the department to reach common understanding about the standards of work it expects in each unit;
• enable teachers to use the examples of previous pupil achievement in lessons, modelling through them the specific aspects of musical work that pupils should aspire to.

Task 10: Reviewing pupils’ work (1 meeting)

Use the next departmental meeting to agree which examples of pupils’ work represent outcomes at, below or beyond expectations for a given unit. Make sure that recordings are either mastered onto one disc or organised into discrete computer files, and that there are agreed statements about what each example demonstrates and the reason why each is a model of a satisfactory or good musical outcome. Plan how these examples can be used as models with pupils the next time this unit is taught.

The Musical Futures initiative (www.musicalfutures.org.uk) explored the ways in which a web resource can be developed to contain numerous examples of pupils’ work linked to specific projects. The strength of the resource is that it can be accessed by all teachers and pupils (as models that demonstrate expectations and inspire), at any time and from any place. A new web site, Numu, has developed some of these ideas from September 2006 so that pupils can share and promote their own music on a national basis.