Dr J's Emporium of Musical Education

Presently, for the spring term my Year 7 class are studying Baroque and Classical Music, while my Year 8 class are happily ploughing through the Romantic period. I always start these projects off with a keyboard performance module that then morphs into a class performance on several instruments.  These bits work fine with both year groups.  The bits that the students have always struggled with has been learning the historical elements.  We in the department have tried the old 'death by powerpoint' approach, and mind mapping, but it has never been satisfactory as the bright kids end up waiting for the others to catch up, while the ones who are still working on improving their language acquisition (96% of our students are EAL - some to the point that English is their fourth or fifth language) or have SEN requirements have struggled. Having been doing a lot of reading about differentiation, listening to webinars and picking peoples brains at school, I thought I would tr...

Having lived in the Middle East for some time now, I find it somewhat of an embarrassment that my knowledge of Arabic has not got much further than the numbers 1-10, hello, goodbye, thank you, please and a few other one or two word answers.  This feeling was reinforced yesterday when I had to  cover a year 10 Arabic class.  To put it mildly I think I understood maybe one word in a hundred and that is being generous! This actually got me thinking about how we approach teaching EAL students in schools.  We expect them to at least try to participate, and encourage them to answer questions which in a lot of subjects - mine included - are abstract concepts and not recognisably linked to everyday life.  I remember from one CPD session that we were told that the moment an EAL student starts asking to go for the toilet, that is the first sign that they are developing understanding and language acquisition - I cannot even do that! From this experience, I am no...