Closed, guided, open

Unit 1: Structuring learning for musical understanding has already provided a rationale for ensuring that pupils experience a wide range of styles, genres and traditions. The link with thinking skills is worth repeating here:

'Styles, genres and traditions each have their own, distinctive modes of musical thinking and construction. It is important that pupils have the opportunity to explore these different forms of musical thinking so that they can build a broad musical understanding and a repertoire of approaches to music making.'

One form of musical thinking is not necessarily more advanced than any other: the nature of a jazz musician’s thinking is neither more complex nor more challenging than that of a classical string quartet player – it is just different. Over time, however, progression in musical understanding is supported by pupils being able to build a repertoire of different ways of thinking and making links between them. The broader that repertoire becomes, the more advanced the musical understanding becomes.

An entitlement to a rich repertoire and breadth of musical thinking is therefore important. Over the key stage, pupils need to experience a planned range of musical styles, genres and tradition, each with a distinctive mode of thinking that is made explicit. This will help to meet the requirement of the National Curriculum (2008) Key Concept 1.3b ‘Critical understanding: drawing on experience of a wide range of musical contexts and styles to inform judgements’. Unit 1, Task 3 (Considering breadth and balance: styles, genres and traditions) provides an audit tool which enables you to see the extent to which this breadth of challenge already exists.

To move beyond this and plan for a coherent range of ‘musical thinking’ experiences, a curriculum map is provided as Document 5a  43kb. It can be used to plan for the range of musical styles, genres and traditions that pupils learn about, so that the breadth of closed, guided and open musical learning over the key stage is identified and assured.

Pupils’ interests

In addition to this breadth of musical thinking and experience, it is important to give pupils the chance to develop forms of musical thinking that spring from their own interests and aptitudes. Many pupils will already have a very strong affinity with and expertise in particular forms and ways of making music. They will need to both refine these and explore how they can be expanded by incorporating other ways of musical working experienced across the curriculum.

This can be organised in one of the following two ways.

1. Some units across the year can be designated ‘pupil-interest’ units. These are often best done either at the start of a year (as a springboard for future learning) or at the end of the year (as an opportunity to capture and demonstrate learning developed across the year within a framework of known music).
2. Units with an emphasis on open-ended genres can enable pupils to follow their own interests: a unit on ‘the conventions of dance music’, for instance, might explore the generic conventions first and then allow pupils to apply the thinking to any form of dance music they choose. A classically trained musician might focus on the waltz; a pupil with an interest in folk could explore folk dances; while a pupil with particular interests in contemporary culture might focus on music for street dancing. The comparisons between these forms of dance music would provide a rich learning experience for all pupils.

The balance of these ‘pupil-interest’ units with other, more ‘teacher-defined’ units will still be important, to ensure that the principle of a breadth of musical thinking is retained. For further information on the process and impact of pupil-led units, you may be interested to see the work of the Musical Futures project: www.musicalfutures.org.uk. This has explored extensively the use of a KS3 music curriculum designed in collaboration with pupils and has also explored the characteristics of 'informal learning'.

Informal learning can make an important contribution to breadth of musical learning. As defined by the Musical Futures project, it has five key principles, the first of which explicitly recognises the importance of pupils' interests.

Principle 1: Learning music that pupils choose, like and identify with.

Principle 2: Learning by listening and copying recordings.

Principle 3: Learning with friends.

Principle 4: Personal, often haphazard learning without structured guidance.

Principle 5: Integration of listening, performing, improvising and composing.

For more details, visit the Practitioners' Resources section of the Musical Futures web site and explore Section 2 of the Teachers' Resource Pack.