Teach-Secondary-14.1

R esearch projects have long concluded that it’s adolescents and young adults who are most engaged with the act of listening to music. A USA-based study conducted in early 2024 found that teenagers, on average, spend 2.5 hours daily listening to music. It would appear that the tracks of our teenage years don’t pale into insignificance as we develop more sophisticated tastes. Instead, the music we listen to in our bedrooms at 15 will likely still thrill and energise us some 50 years on –more potently, it seems, than music from any other periods of our lives. The students in our secondary music classrooms are therefore surely ripe for the enriching, informative and life-sustaining experiences in listening that we music teachers are ready to give them– so why does delivering this prove to be so challenging? Do set-works help, or ultimately hinder them from developing the deep listening experiences we know they’re capable of? And more to the point – how can even begin to compete with those all-important and ever-expanding playlists our teens spend so much time listening to? Listening barriers Roberto Iannandrea is the Director of Music at St George’s International School in Rome, and readily concedes that the use of set-works can be problematic. Get on their WAVELENGTH Listening is that crucial component of KS3/4 music lessons that can often seem hardest to get right, observes Helen Tierney – so how can we help students become more attentive listeners? “ I started teaching when the listening examwas based on unfamiliar piece, ” he recalls. “ I remember that the teaching community was ecstatic when the set-works were introduced, because it gave teachers much more focus, and above all, resources – but set-works can be too prescriptive, and favour more ‘Western Classical’-trained students, while creating frustration in those students who are more provide direction – either on the board, or via our core language booklets. ” Emily further shares Roberto’s concerns around set-works limiting, rather than expanding in-depth listening skills: “ The danger is that very specific content about those works are learnt, without students gaining a fuller understanding of the music’s place in a wider cross-section of a particular genre or composer. ” young age. “ This means things like instrument recognition, being able to feel a pulse and work out a tempo, etc. varies hugely. In addition, it means that some students haven’t been exposed to a range of styles, and this can result in them being unwilling to engage with music they wouldn’t normally listen to. “ I think it’s important to establish listening as something that happens regularly, and an expectation inmusic lessons. I also think it’s important that students understand that they won’t ‘like’ every piece of music (and that there isn’t an expectation for them to do so), but that they have to learn to appreciate the skill it takes to compose a piece, and find the important features that make up the music. ” Chris also points out how important the visual aspect can be for many students: “ We always try and find engaging examples – often using videos to show the musicians playing, rather than just listening to a track. Our Y9 students really enjoy, and come up with insightful responses to a listening exercise based on a reggae remix of [The Weeknd track’] ‘Blinding Lights’ .” “Students not havinga secure vocabulary to really explainor critiquewhat theyarehearing is definite barrier” pop-, rock- or jazz-oriented. ” Roberto also thinks that the extensive subject vocabulary needed for KS3/4 listening is an obstacle. So too does Emily Crowhurst, Director of the School 21 performing arts school in Stratford, which won the ‘Outstanding School Music Department’ category in this year’s Music &Drama Education Awards. “ In KS3, students not having a secure language base/vocabulary to really explain or critique what they are hearing is a definite barrier, ” says Emily, “ and can be at KS4, if students aren’t provided with the right tools to articulate what they are hearing, or given specific things to listen for. At School 21, we explicitly share vocabulary that’s linked to what we want students to listen for, to Are you experienced? The variety of musical experiences (or lack thereof) that students have when they arrive in Y7 similarly concerns Chris Drake – Director of Music at the Winston Churchill School in Woking, and recipient of Classic FM’s Secondary School-Age Teacher of the Year Award. “ At the beginning of KS3, the biggest challenge to class listening are the wide experiences that students have had in primary school, ” he observes. “ These can range from students almost never having listened to music in either a school setting (KS1 and KS2) or had experience of live music, through to students who regularly listened to and analysed music (at a basic level), or were taken to concerts or shows from a 60 teachwire.net/secondary