How to Teach Guides

How to Teach Guides are written by teachers and other music educators. Each guide focuses on a new aspect of the National Curriculum for Music and highlights some practical advice about how to implement it across Key Stage 3.

How to Teach Guides: Planning for the new National Curriculum in Music
This guide offers a step-by-step process for planning schemes and units of work. Together with a range of supporting materials, the guide helps teachers rethink what they are used to teaching and find new ways to teach music that fulfils the expectations of the new National Curriculum for Music.

PDF: Planning for the new National Curriculum in Music

Mind Map Chart
PDF Mind Map Chart downloadable as PDF

Key Stage Overview 1
Word doc: Key Stage Overview Document

Key Stage Overview 2
Word doc: Key Stage Overview Document

Unit Planning Template
Word doc: Unit Planning Template

How to Teach Guides: Creativity
In the new National Curriculum for Music the word 'Creativity' appears at Key Stage 3 with a higher degree of clarity and boldness. It is one of five key concepts that will underpin all teaching and learning at this Key Stage. It is now a statutory requirement for all subject areas, and is a major theme of the new philosophy. Creative and Critical Thinking features strongly as a whole-school aspect of the curriculum; it appears both in the Cross-curricular Dimensions and in the Personal Learning and Thinking Skills (PLTs).
PDF: Creativity

How to Teach Guides: Using Technology to Aid Processes of Musical Performance
In this guide we explore the possibilities of using music technologies in live musical performance settings. Music technologies can include specific pieces of hardware (e.g. synthesisers, samplers or sound processors), software (e.g. Ableton Live, Cubase, etc.) or other technologies (e.g. Nintendo DS Lite, Sony Play-stations, etc.). Like any traditional musical instrument, each piece of music technology will have its own strengths and weaknesses. But using these types of technology in musical performance often leads to refreshing new instrumental combinations, where pupils can experiment with new textures and timbres. It can be a genuinely creative, because the music usually has to be devised and improvised. This, in turn, helps our pupils to develop the essential skills required for music performance and become more fully-rounded musicians.
PDF: Using Technology to Aid Processes of Musical Performance

How to Teach Guides: Opportunities for Pupils to Work with Musicians
Opportunities to work with accomplished musicians who can model creative processes can be inspirational and motivating for pupils. It can help them to develop their own creative work as they observe and work with musicians to generate ideas, explore possibilities and take risks. It is an important part of helping pupils to connect with the role of music and musicians in society and to gain a deeper understanding of the music industry.
PDF: Opportunities for Pupils to Work with Musicians

How to Teach Guides: Critical Understanding
Critical Understanding is the cognitive, knowledge based aspect of learning music. It is the knowledge of, and about, music. Most importantly, it is the ability to express this in a musical way. This would include the use of prose, musical notation, musical vocabulary, instrumentation, form and structure, and analytical skills. This guide will explain the difference between the new National Curriculum for Music and the previous curriculum orders. It will give guidance on how best to tackle this important Key Concept. There will also be reference to resources which help to explain aspects of Critical Understanding in more detail.
PDF: Critical Understanding

How to Teach Guides: Personal Learning and Thinking Skills
This guide is a resource for thinking about how music contributes to and can be taught explicitly to develop PLTS. It provides a starting point for evaluating your curriculum, give ideas on how to integrate PLTS fully into teaching and learning, and establish the links between PLTS and the new National Curriculum Key Concepts.
PDF: Personal Learning and Thinking Skills

How to Teach Guides: Developing Thinking Skills
In recent years there has been a growing interest in how to develop thinking skills. This interest has been fed by new knowledge about how the brain works and how people learn. The particular ways in which people apply their minds to solve problems are called Thinking Skills. This guide defines what thinking skills are and considers how they can be developed through the Key Stage 3 music curriculum.
PDF: Developing Thinking Skills

How to Teach Guides: Cross Curriculum Dimensions
This guide explores the aspects of teaching and learning that can be developed through the Cross Curricular Dimensions. It focuses on developing approaches that increase pupils’ engagement, motivation and commitment to their learning and uses a model of working with outside agencies as identified in the Curriculum Opportunities section of the revised Programme of Study.
PDF: Cross Curriculum Dimensions

In addition to these How to Teach guides we are pleased to make available a more extensive set of materials written by Phil Kirkman. For further information about Phil's work please visit his blog at www.kirki.co.uk

Embedding Digital Technologies In The Music Classroom
Digital technologies are increasingly being integrated into the fabric of human society. As part of this trend, they are increasingly being used to support and restructure education in schools. Recent research also demonstrates that many digital technologies are being used to support the implementation of musical curricula. The aim of the unit is to demonstrate a working out of the key concepts from the National Curriculum, into realistic classroom activities that promote learning through the integration of Digital Technologies.
PDF: Embedding Digital Technologies In The Music Classroom