Hello and welcome to the new secondary music blog!
You will receive a fortnightly update from me (Dave Jones), which I hope will be useful for you all. Any ideas or feedback will be gratefully received at dave.jones@hms.hants.gov.uk, but please bear in mind that my secondment as Curriculum Consultant with HMS is on Fridays only.
For regular visitors of the blog and its associated resources page, you may notice a couple of changes. Firstly, you don't need to remember a password to get in to it any more (hoorah!). As a result, we have temporarily removed dozens of files which are not for open national distribution. The resources area will be updated and extended in the coming weeks, but please do let me know if you would like me to send you anything directly in the mean time.
With this in mind, and with the boundless energy that I am sure you all feel at the start of the school year (!), now is the ideal time to reintroduce the guiding principles behind the Hampshire Music Education Framework. My outlook on music curriculum is greatly influenced by the wisdom of Kevin Rogers and, like many of you I'm sure, this framework provided me with the perfect starting point to plan a successful Key Stage 3 curriculum. You will find the four files which explain the fundamentals of the framework in the linked page below, and many others will be available to you again soon.
Over the coming weeks, I will be posting ideas from my own curriculum planning, composition projects, assessment and resources. I will also be breaking down the updated national plan for music education in to bitesized chunks, as well as drawing on the most useful parts of the Model Music Curriculum. I hope this will allow you some reflection time, without the need for a week off timetable to digest it all. However, links are below if you would like to dive right in. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-power-of-music-to-change-lives-a-national-plan-for-music-education
Finally, I would like to use this blog to share any events that you may be interested in, or achievements from your departments. So please do let me know if you have anything you'd like to advertise or celebrate. To start us off, here is a project that some of your Key Stage 3 students might be interested in. It seems like a really nice idea and could be a fun project either for a whole year group or selected individuals.
London Sinfonietta composition challenges
Follow the link below to find out more and watch an explanation video.
https://londonsinfonietta.org.uk/composition-challenges
I hope you are all well and enjoying a fruitful start to the school year. Please do let me know if I can help in any way. I will be available every Friday. Every other day of the week I will be tearing my imaginary hair out over the ridiculously over-complicated score for the Addams Family musical.
Thanks
Dave