KS3 Music

a professional development programme

Challenges

There are many reasons why pupils may not by challenged appropriately to engage with their learning. You can see an extensive list of common issues and solutions here, but this section is designed to help teachers with three key issues:

  • how to be sure what prior musical experiences have had, and to consider what skills and aptitudes they will have as a result;
  • how to set appropriate musical challenges for musically able pupils;
  • how to encourage greater independence by challenging pupils’ musical thinking.

Select each tab below in turn to examine each of these key areas and develop specific techniques to challenge pupils in their musical learning.

Prior experiences

The importance of pupils being challenged in a way that builds on and extends their prior learning has already been noted, but it is worth stating again here.

  • Challenge is a prerequisite for learning – to make progress in any curriculum area, learners need to work regularly in advance of their prior attainment.
  • Setting the right level of challenge is crucial – if the learning activity is too easy, pupils will become bored; if it is too hard, frustration will lead to demotivation.

This helps to create a climate for learning that is positive: pupils need to be able to feel that they can meet learning challenges, acquiring the self-belief and motivation to address the challenges presented to them in classrooms. Equally, they need to feel that, by building a strong sense of challenge, the lesson has purpose for all learners and that there is something in it for everyone.

Knowing the range of prior musical experiences that pupils have had is critical in establishing these appropriate levels of challenge for all learners This requires teachers to know about all pupils’ experiences across a range of activities and will also enable teachers to meet the requirement of the National Curriculum (2008) that pupils should ‘build on their own interests and skills’. Use Activity Resource 4a to find out more about pupils’ prior musical experiences in two classes, and to use the information to set more appropriate challenges in lessons.

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Setting challenges

In providing additional challenge for those pupils with significant prior experience of music making, most teachers will focus on providing pupils with activities involving more challenging skills: taking harder parts, being the leader of an ensemble, using standard notation rather than graphic scores. While this is important, it is unlikely to stretch these musical pupils fully, since this kind of challenge is more about the quantity of the learning than the quality of the learning – the essential balance of their learning is therefore still towards the lower end of the cognitive challenge.

What these pupils do need is the opportunity to develop their musical understanding, with more sophisticated skills being used and developed alongside this process. Throughout this unit, great emphasis has been placed on the relationship between effective challenge and cognitive or thinking skills. Music is no different in this respect to other subjects: the greatest challenges are not those that simply demand more advanced skills, but those that demand more sophisticated thinking about and understanding of music.

Use Activity Resource 4b to help you reflect on the nature of more-able musical pupils, and how you can challenge them in ways that will develop their musical understanding as much as their skills or knowledge.

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Challenging independence

One of the key features of effective challenge is the way that it develops pupils’ capacity to work as independent learners. The explanation of Bloom’s taxonomy in the Activity Resource 1 shows that the shift from stages 1–3 to stages 4–6 is characterised not only by the move from lower-order to higher-order thinking, but also by the move from dependence (knowledge, comprehension and application) to independence (analysis, synthesis and evaluation).

A number of strategies can facilitate this move towards independent learning; they are described in Pedagogy and practice: teaching and learning in secondary schools, Unit 17: Developing effective learners (DCSF 0440-2004).

Perhaps the most significant strategies, though, begin to encourage metacognition (knowledge about one’s own thought processes: thinking about thinking) and self-review. These aspects of thinking are requirements of the higher stages of the taxonomy. Strategies to encourage them include the following.

  • Sharing with pupils the criteria for success:
    • pupils need to know why they are doing something, how it links with other work and what a good response or outcome will look like.
  • Using phrases and ‘quality boards’ to explain and clarify:
    • having phrases on display and making it clear to pupils when they are to be used;
    • drawing pupils’ attention to how they should work by saying: ‘In a good group I will see …’.
  • Helping pupils to develop self-assessment skills:
    • getting pupils to evaluate their own work helps them to make links, gain a sense of purpose and develop independent judgement.

You can use Activity Resource 4c to reflect on the extent to which a lesson can incorporate these more advanced stages of the taxonomy to encourage greater use of higher-order thinking skills, and to design specific strategies to promote independent learning.

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