The partnership between Musical Futures and Trinity, announced earlier in October, aims to develop resources and approaches that support music teachers in producing creative and meaningful teaching, learning and assessment experiences. The first schools to take part have already generated some great ideas and outcomes.
During the last school year at Coopers School in London, music teacher Emma Goddard explored these materials as part of a Battle of the Bands project with Year 9 and to support Year 10 GCSE students with songwriting, using one of the songs as a starting point to play and unpick.
Students at Matthew Arnold School in Oxford were provided all the materials on an iPad and devised their own ways to develop performances in groups. The teachers were fascinated by the integration of skills and independent learning that students have already explored and how they responded to the task, as well as the freedom to express in very creative musical ways.
At St Bedes and St Joseph Catholic College in Bradford, instrumental and classroom teachers worked together to run an after school music group for students identified as being more proficient in music or who have chosen to take music at KS4. The purpose was to work together to close the gap between classroom and instrumental music tuition and the programme ended with a summer performance by all involved.
In Northern Ireland, students at St Patrick’s Academy have vocalised the music before transferring it onto musical instruments with the support of the resources.
More schools have recently come on board and we hope to showcase some of the outcomes from the pilots in the coming months, including student performances and their thoughts on the projects.
If your school is interested in joining the pilot, please contact Anna Gower at email@example.com for more information.
Blog post written by: Anna Gower, Head of Programmes: Musical Futures
(Photo credit: Emile Holba)