If at first you don't succeed...

Start, start again.

What happens when students just aren't getting it?

I have certainly been guilty of this in the past, but it is all too easy to look at the clock/national curriculum/exam schedule/{insert any constraining factor here} and make a decision to move on, albeit with the best intentions.

I'd like to think that when student encounter difficulties in my lessons, I intervene in an appropriate way that helps them move towards the intended learning outcome.  On the other hand I am sure that there have been times (hopefully less as my career has progressed) when I have cited "time constraints" and accepted work that is not of the standard of which the student or students are capable.  A kind of mañana attitude if you like: "We'll get it right next time".

How fair is this on the students though?  It might well be that they simply needed more time, or that the original approach or teaching was not suitable for them (not easy to admit).  In either case, moving on before the student/s "got it", (whatever "it" may be) not only detracts value from "it", but also fundamentally fails the learner.

I'm not trying to preach here by the way.  This is something that I have identified as a weakness in my own teaching in the past. I teach in a school with a well embedded intranet.  All lessons are created in web pages and placed online.  As a result there had been a tendency for me teach "straight out of the box" and not tailor lessons to the needs of the class or individuals within that class, despite having written the lessons myself.  There is also a temptation to see the row of lesson plans in the unit menu webpage and think "well this is lesson a, so I need to get through it all in this x amount of time to get to lesson b next week."

Now that I think about it, it very much reminds me of a scene from Mike Leigh's 'Nuts in May'; a work of genius I might add.  The two protagonists, and if you have had the joy of seeing the film, you will know that I use the term protagonist very loosely. Anyway Keith and Candice-Marie, are on a visit to Corfe Castle:

There are so many analogies I could draw here but the main thing to focus on is the quality of Candice-Marie's experience. Annoying as she may be; what is she actually getting out of the trip?


In AS Music my students have been looking at British popular music since 1960 and as part of the unit: Music in Context, they must study seminal works from the period in order to answer an essay question in their written paper at the year.  The myriad possible question combinations mean that when push comes to shove the students have to know the pieces inside out. Through studying the pieces students develop their harmonic analysis, their skill to listen with focus and extend their musical vocabulary but what is assessed for the exam is their knowledge and writing.

Perhaps naively I expected that with my students; having done a bridging unit on harmony, who at the same time as the popular music study were busy analysing a Mozart symphony; would be able to analyse the pop songs in the same depth.  I had even created a quite in depth resource bank using rmap, with links to useful sites, the tracks to listen to and some contextual information.

Surely this structuring and prior knowledge would mean that the response would be quality.  I was wrong!

The responses were typically very limited, and really offered only brushstroke insights onto what was happening in the music.  I think that I had missed a trick in really getting the students to engage with the tracks critically, in both senses of the word.  The students had clearly not asked enough of, nor the right kinds of questions. Clearly, I had also neglected to emphasise the importance of listening for pleasure as the students showed little or no attachment to the music when reporting back with their findings.

Personally I do not think that focussed listening for a specific purpose must be detached from listening for pleasure.  In fact I would go so far as to say that listening to music without pleasure is bankrupt.  That is not to say that you must enjoy all music, but certainly if you are going to listen to music in any depth then you must seek out some interest in what you hear, creating some kind of relationship with the music and finding your own meaning.  Even the most minute detail that you find tucked away within the textures can be joyous and golden.  Without this, the exercise becomes mechanical, and a chore.

So I had to find a way to instil this passion for listening in my students, but with this as the means to the end of more detailed analysis and as a consequence greater musical discovery. (I think that might be a positive feedback loop, I certainly hope so.)

My strategy was two-part.  I would model an appropriate student response, but using a track that reflected my own personal passion.  I chose the track Starman by David Bowie, as this was one that was already highlighted as a seminal work and one that to be frank, I love.  I could say more, but that will just set me off, so I won't.

I completed my own analysis of the intro alone, in an attempt to show two things:

1. 
   
   The level of depth that was not only possible, but required for the exam
2. 
   
   My passion for the subject matter, in the way that I spoke about the piece

Below is the presentation I put together. I purposely made the presentation very objective.  The permanence of the resource for the students determined that it should reflect the way in which they should write in the exam, i.e. no fluff.

Analysis of the intro of Starman by David Bowie on Prezi

However I'm pretty sure that the amount of cotton wool that poured forth from my lips would have had Wordsworth hunting for his pen (well maybe not). I waxed lyrical and must have used the word genius at least twenty times, and came across like the proud farmer showing off his prize sow but it worked.  The beauty of talk though, is that it happens in time just like music and what endures in the mind are the best or most important moments, the parts that consciously or otherwise, you decide are worth putting in the bank and duly absorb.

I think the impact of the volume of analysis of what is essentially the same two chords over and over again struck the students, but I hope that the communication of my own passion had as much, if not more influence over the analysis that students went back to redo and the others that they have done since. 

Student's early attempt:

Starman

Student's second attempt at the same song: click here

Student's later analysis on a new song:

The greater level of detail and progression is striking in these examples, and my students' enthusiasm was far more evident in the way in which they talked about their findings. The summary sheets are a tool that we co-constructed to force the issue of focussed listening with intent (using the categories from the exam spec) and it seems to be working.  We might have lost time, but I think that we have gained so much more.

I quote one of my students who said to me in a recent lesson, of The Clash's London Calling:

"I've been listening for the third guitar that's written on the score for ten minutes now and I've just heard it.  That's mint how it's hidden away and you can hear the effect it has, but you can't actually notice it's there on its own unless you're really hunting for it"

Listen, or should I say hunt for yourself. It's true. And it is mint!