Teach-Primary-Issue-19.2

teachwire.net/primary 58 Teaching creative subjects in a knowledge-led curriculum can seem all but impossible, but there are ways and means to successfully combine the two... W hat’s the most ludicrous thing you’ve ever heard from SLT? For me, it was when a certain leader questioned why, as a music teacher, I needed to assess pupils’ ability to compose or perform. “Those are skills; we operate a knowledge-led curriculum,” I was told. “Just assess what they know”. Incidentally, a close second is the same leader telling the entire school that “you can’t teach creativity”. Sigh. As music teachers, the phrase ‘knowledge-led curriculum’ can be daunting. Without proper understanding of what it means, we fear the prospect of losing our beloved practical, skills-based, and beyond all else, creative , subject, to rigid knowledge organisers and restrictive multiple-choice quizzes. But after years of teaching at both secondary and primary schools, I’ve discovered that we can actually meet knowledge-led expectations without losing the heart of music. Creativity is... Having read several definitions of creativity that I don’t feel really fit, I’ve decided that the best way to explain the concept to pupils and colleagues alike, is ‘making lots of decisions to create something new’. For example, when composing a piece of music, we must decide the key, tempo, metre, melody, instrumentation, structure, rhythm, etc. When creating a painting, we have to consider the colour palette, materials, subject, framing, and composition. And when putting together a new recipe, we choose the ingredients, cooking method, plating, etc. All creative endeavours require a multitude of decisions, so when teaching music, we need to help pupils make these choices in an informed context. Of course, children cannot make a decision about instrumentation, for example, without access to, and knowledge of, a range of instruments. Similarly, they can’t compose a disco bassline without knowing what disco is, or, for that matter, what a bassline sounds like. Pupils need to know certain things and recreate existing music to further their understanding of particular styles or conventions before they are ready to create something new. Hence, we arrive at our structure for teaching: know, recreate, create. Need to know If creativity relies on decision-making, the knowledge we impart should prepare pupils to be able to make those decisions. I have found that organising my long-term curriculum into strands of knowledge is an effective way to structure what I need to teach. I have one ‘strand’ for each of the elements of music, then one for performance-related knowledge, and one for com- position-related knowledge. I then refer to the national curriculum (including considering what building blocks are required for KS3 and KS4) and the model music curriculum to populate the strands. In the medium-term, I start by picking out the associated knowledge I need to teach from each strand as a starting point. For example, if the long-termmusic plan calls for children to know that a 4/4 metre and fast tempo combine to make music that is good to dance to, as well as how to play three chords on the ukelele, I might decide that some lessons on rock ‘n’ roll would be a sensible vehicle for these skills. See the table on the right for more examples. Repeat after me Plato famously said that all art is imitation, and recreating existing music can be an immensely valuable learning experience. Know, recreate, CREATE T EACH PR I MARY MUS I C SPEC I A L I N AS SOC I A T I ON W I TH ASHLEY BETTS “We can meet knowledge-led expectations without losing the heart of music” 58 | www.teachwire.net