Adjusting to New School Priorities.

STEM.  STEAM.  STREAM.  C21st Competencies.  Whole School Curriculum Focus.  EAL Focused Learning.  Assessment is for Learning. STEM.  STEAM. STREAM.... (and repeat ad infinitum).....

Our school is presently on a drive to change it's focus from a perceived position of content driven learning to the all singing and dancing process focused C21st Learning.  This new drive is obviously an absolute pain as it means changing everything, redesigning the wheel and ultimately becoming the teacher that we never wanted to be.  Or does it?

I have always been aware that as a teacher I tend to be fairly set in my ways and have been influenced by:

1. How I was taught at school and university;
2. How I personally learn (I come from a family of very competitive Trivial Pursuits players mean I am good at picking up factoids), and;
3. How I was initially shown during teacher training.

I am sure other teachers also view change with suspicion, but having started to look at the C21st Learning a little closer, maybe it is time to give these new ideas a go.

Previously, when writing a scheme of work, my ideas would try and include self, peer and teacher formative assessment and then some kind of summative assessment to stick in the tracking documents (I am very proud of my excel spreadsheets with all their automatic calculations).  Now that I am revisiting these I have realised that some of these processes have been getting a little samey.

I have spoken about the C21st Learning Competencies on my C21st Learning page, so I will not be going over it in much detail here, but basically the four areas are:

• Collaboration
• Critical Thinking
• Communication
• Creativity

In Music, obviously these are naturally already part and parcel of the subject (especially when approaching it from an Orff Schulwerk standpoint), but here are ways that I am revising the way I teach to make this even more effective.

Collaboration:

How is the classroom set up? I realised mine was not as conducive to group discussion as I thought, so cue changing the seating arrangements into tables of 6 rather than lines.  This has had a knock on effect to how I am approaching listening tasks, with less focus on individual work and more think, pair (or group) and then share.  This also has had an effect on how much some of the students who have traditionally struggled have got out of the tasks.

Critical Thinking:

I always get the students to complete a self reflection after finishing a piece of practical work, but this was becoming a little stale.  After reading some of the C21st learning literature I am now looking at continuing with the initial questions to help them structure their thoughts, but then rather than just asking them to then write these up in a paragraph, getting them to write a concert review of their performance, or an ABRSM examiners report of their partners work.  Early days yet, but hopefully this will produce some more interesting responses from the students.

Communication:

Apart from the use of more pair and group work in the classroom, I am also developing my use of media.  I have used Edmodo for a number of years, but I am experimenting with developing this further.  Initial trials of online assessments worked okay, but it was a bind chasing up the students who almost refuse to use the site (mind you, these are the ones who almost refuse to do homework anyway!), but it does mean I can give the students supporting work for their studies, and they can contact myself or their friends if they are stuck.  It has also worked well with my KS2 choir as it means they can access backing tracks and words at home - the quality of their performance has gone through the roof.

Creativity:

As part of the Creative Arts this should be an easy one, but it is not!  With only one lesson a week, we are hard pressed to do much more performance, unless the students are interested in joining in extracurricular groups, and they are undertaking set compositions as part of their studies already.  I am hoping that through more of a focus on Orff technique I might be able to persuade them to try the road less travelled, such as more improvisation, but teenagers can be a little shy at coming forward with their ideas.  We shall see...

Hopefully over the next couple of weeks/ months/ rest of this academic year I might see a difference in the students approach, but I for one am enjoying having to reappraise my teaching techniques to facilitate this.