Dr J's Emporium of Musical Education

Thanks to the good weather that the UK has experienced this summer, I was fortunate to be able to spend a lot of time in the saddle cycling around Scotland.  During these trips I got to considering how I was approaching the many challenges that appeared around almost every bend, namely hills!  In cycling there are two main approaches to climbing a hill – spinning and grinding and, while both have merits, everyone has their own preference. In layman’s terms, spinning is where the cyclist selects a lower, easier gear and pedals faster, although it can be tiring after a while.  Grinding on the other hand is where a higher gear is chosen, and the cyclists has a slower cadence but has to put more effort into turning the pedals. Many cyclists when they first start are grinders, and stop when tired or the incline is too steep, awhereas most pro cyclists will opt for spinning to keep the cadence (of their pedalling) more consistent.  This yea...

Last weekend I attempted to make ice cream for a book club meet I was hosting. The recipe I was following was from Nigella Lawson and was one that I have successfully made countless times before. For some reason this time it didn’t work with the cream splitting, leaving me with home-made butter and whey that had a distinctly minty orange flavour. Staring failure in the face I made a decision just see what would happen if I froze the whey and use the butter in some other recipes.  This led me to make some orange and mint flavoured scones , orange and mint frozen whey and cartons full of orange and mint caramel popcorn for a friend’s barbecue…. Joshua Morris in a recent tes.com article comments on how we have perhaps become too concerned with success and do not allow our students the option of failing. With the now obsessive culture of school, teacher and student success we are at the stage where everybody is scared to get things wrong. I have recently seen this myself at...

I have signed up to take part in a staff peer mentoring scheme at school.  This was all well and good (a bit of peer mentoring can be a great thing in helping validate how great we are as educators), but when I was asked what I would like the focus to be, while I admit that there is always areas of improvement, I was stuck for an exact area to develop.  As a solution to this the mentoring coordinator suggested that he might come in and video a lesson and then we could see what develops from there.   Of course the lesson we had arranged for the videoing to take place in was on a day where the HoD was bedridden with man flu (actually it might have been proper flu as nothing usually slows him down)!  This meant I was having to get cover work sorted for his classes, briefing the cover teacher and starting the lesson.  Even with these beginnings and rushing about, on reviewing the video I realised the area that I really needed to work on with my own class was...

So it is the last week of the Autumn term and the school is slowly winding down towards the winter break.  Which means it is a great time to start thinking about what we are going to be doing in the Spring Term of 2018!  Already it is beginning to look like it is going to be very busy, and so any ideas that can help with lessening marking/ preparation workload are greatly appreciated. I must admit that most of these ideas I am looking at are taken from # teachertoolkit.co.uk , which is a website I would heartily recommend, along with the twitter account - I have learnt more from these in the last couple of months than I thought possible.  The site has had some great ideas about differentiation, plenaries and homework that I am already using - check out the takeaway homework menu  which we used as a starting point for developing differentiated homework options which the students love - but what I am finding most interesting is the free online resources that ...

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: How I was taught at school and university; How I personally learn (I come from a family of very competitive Trivial Pursuits players mean I am good at picking up factoids), and; How I was initially shown during teacher training. I am sure other teachers also view change with suspicion, but having star...