I recently took time to reflect over the busy week and weekend of music. From having just seen our Year 4 students start the journey of learning an instrument through the College’s Music Immersion Program, to working with advanced students from the Queensland Youth Orchestra (QYO), it was again confirmed that – despite being at…
Tag: Music education
Reframing cognitive processes in music ‘analysis’
Year 11 Music teachers in Queensland are now a few weeks into the new Music 2019 General Senior Syllabus. As those involved know, there is a significant shift in assessment practice in this syllabus, along with mandated subject matter, which together, will likely influence our considerations surrounding pedagogical approach. Though the syllabus brings with it…
“If you cannot teach me to fly…”
“If you cannot teach me to fly, teach me to sing.” ― J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan The 2017 school year is over… and we certainly ‘flew’ through it! As I’ve shared before, one of my last tasks to complete is a summary and reflection on the year in classroom music for the College magazine. I…
Instructions for ‘detangling’: Structuring a Musicology viewpoint
In an earlier post – Disentangling the entangled: Thinking about and through Musicology – I spoke of an approach to music analysis as it is required of in Queensland’s Music: Senior Syllabus (QCAA, 2013)[i]. Since then, I have also received Musicology work from both my Year 11 and Year 12 Music classes. The Year 11…
Five Minds and Music
I will often search for a memorable, ‘accessible’ and somewhat ‘inspiring’ quote to act as an epigraph for my end-of-year school magazine article (yes, it’s that time of year again already!). The theme I went with to encapsulate 2015 was, basically, that ‘musicking’ activates many facets of our ‘mind’ – that when we ‘music’, we…
Encouraging ‘deeper listening’ and own thinking about and of music
In Year 11 and 12 Music in Queensland, Australia, students work from the Queensland Curriculum and Assessment Authority (QCAA) Music: Senior Syllabus[i]. From the learning experiences devised from this document, students are assessed across three dimensions of musical study – Composition, Musicology, and Performance. In my experience, the dimensions of Performance and Composition often draw…
It’s All About the Verb…
It has been quite a number of years now since I became acquainted with the work of Christopher Small. His works Music, Society and Education (1977), Music of the Common Tongue (1987) and Musicking (1998) were intelligently combative to the institution of music education in Australia at the time – in fact, they still are……
Dr Cade Bonar 