ABOUT THIS COURSE

This intensive, interactive course is designed for teachers in their first two years of teaching the course, and also for teaching thinking about moving exam boards to teach GCSE Music for the first time. The course will be particularly beneficial for teachers who would like new ideas about developing skills, examining broader topics to create an integrated scheme of work for A level While the opening session will provide an introduction and overview to the Pearson Edexcel GCSE Music course, the vast majority of the day will be spent exploring a range of approaches to tackling each of the papers.

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BENEFITS OF ATTENDING

• Find out about the core concepts, key challenges, levels of the specification and ways to integrate your two year course for high level attainment and achievement
• An overview of the skills students require to be successful on this course.
• Take away high quality learning and teaching approaches, methods and techniques
• Advice on how to pace the course
• Examples of effective methods of how to train students in listening, analysing, composing and performing
• Advice on exam preparation and approaches to tackling the component 3 written paper

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PROGRAMME

Pearson GCSE Music: Overview of the specification

10.00 – 11.00am

• What’s involved in the course? An overview of the Pearson Music course content
• What are the standards of each component, the challenges and the opportunities?
• Recognising and working with students’ varying starting points
• Structuring a flexible course that allows you to respond to students’ needs
• Thoughts on an integrated approach to performing, improvising, composing, listening and analysing
• Understanding the assessment criteria

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Morning break

11.00– 11.15am

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Developing Listening Skills in GCSE musicians

11.15 – 12.15pm

• Where to start and how to develop listening skills
• The importance of sound in every lesson
• How to take pieces of music apart – in sound and words
• How to support students to develop the skills necessary to achieve good compositions
• How to get students looking forward to hearing pieces of music they haven’t heard before
• How listening and analysis can be used to inform composing
• How melodic and rhythmic dictation can be part of the fabric of this process
• Skeleton scores questions and how to write practice questions for Component 3 questions 1-4

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Putting the Wow Factor into Teaching Appraising

12.15 – 1.00pm

• How to develop students’ appraising skills to make evaluative and critical judgements about music
• Making complicated topics easy
• How to build students’ musical vocabulary through practical music-making
• Teaching essay writing, types\ of questions
• Standards and examiner expectations – how do I know if my students are writing well?

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Lunch

1.00 – 2.00pm

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Approaches to teaching Composition

2.00-3.00pm

• Building and developing the skills students need to demonstrate in assessment
• What might excellent teaching of different types of stimuli look like, to develop students’ skills?
• How do I know when a student has reached the top of the assessment bands?
• How to extend boundaries and take risks in your composing workshops
• Scores, descriptions, screenshots, recordings and mixdowns

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Afternoon Break

3.00– 3.25pm

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Key Essentials: Planning your course and assessment over 2 years

3.25- 3.45pm

•  Effectively establishing a well planned, ambitious and relevant curriculum
• How to confidently assess your students
• How do I know what effective feedback is and the impact it should have?
• Strategies to prepare your students for the assessments and examination