On the power of critique

This interview was conducted with Charlie a week after a whole class critique session on his composition for the Frozen Moments project. I bumped into Charlie on the corridor and grabbed the opportunity to get some sound bites from him, knowing that he had valued the experience. Charlie had not been prep'd (you can hear me prompt him sometimes) and is around the national average if you believe in CAT scores and seeing students as numbers. 


See if you can guess which year group he is in...





None of the qualities that surface from this conversation are the result of any amazing teaching on my behalf. More the protocol we used and the innate nature of Critique to lead to  a focus on high quality content.


What strikes me listening back to this is just how powerful his testimony is for a number of reasons:


"I could see..." This hints at a clarity of direction.

"Harsh on content" comes straight to the fore, it is clear that Charlie values having his work robustly challenged.


"So the person doesn't feel like them failing" So failure is important but it must be made safe.


"I'm improving and I haven't even started the work" NOW the aforementioned clarity is crystallised. This is about the best thing I have ever heard a student say. Incredibly perceptive and inspirational for me to hear.


"Then I get the most out of the class... all of the brain power" Wow, here is a statement that says community more perfectly than I ever could.


"We thought we'll probably get away with that" Quality, quality, quality.


Here is the feedback Charlie got from the class, the technical words in bold are the students'. I did rephrase some in terms of sentence structure though.

Feedback from the class:

Good use of silence at the end, try fading out the wind sample.

Try extending the magic sample as it cuts out quite early. Also this could be faded out and made louder.

We love the wind sample being in the piece throughout; the wind sample should also fade in gradually to help build tension.

Think about your choice of timbre on the ostinato, it sounds a little squelchy and should sound more mysterious.

The accelerando works well with that choice of notes in the ostinato and the staccato way that those notes are played. The crescendo should peak at forte earlier and start to fade back to piano to prepare for the silence.

We love the pedal and the way the timbre changes gradually over time. Try adding another A in a different octave later on to help it change more.

Get rid of the word "view" from  on the laugh

Oh, Year 7 by the way.