Providing varied musical challenges

Setting a clear purpose for pupils’ work

If a range of challenges is to be set, pupils need to understand what the specific challenge is for any given activity. This will require them to be given a clear purpose for their work by teachers, who should be:

• making explicit to pupils the sorts of musical challenges and thinking required;
• setting clear learning objectives for both music and creativity;
• providing pupils with a clear brief for tasks;
• sequencing learning within units and across the key stage to ensure progression in music, creativity and thinking.

At the same time, teachers need to encourage enquiry and risk taking in pupils’ work, and to make provision for this in planning. In order to accommodate this approach, teachers should plan activities that are open-ended and challenging, not tasks that are over-prescriptive and have limited outcomes. Moreover, planned opportunities for developing creativity in pupils’ work should be reflected in the learning objectives for the lesson.

Task 9: Learning objectives (30 minutes)

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.