Teacher behaviours

Post forty-four in our (re)learning to teach music series. This is week nine of the collaborative blogging and we begin chapter seven. 

Teacher behaviours that will support students in developing appropriate and effective learning behaviours in the music classroom. 

Mike Morgan @MikeMMusicED

At my previous school, I was lead on developing our learning model. This was based on the High Performance Learning framework created by Deborah Eyre. This was based on pupils being able to learn competencies to become better learners. What I discovered was that the idea of knowledge was always something which could be grasped if we teach and encourage learning behaviours. As stated in my previous addition, I tend to call these competencies. I think it is important that these are aspects that we discuss with the pupils. I always remember a piece of praise that was bought up in a job interview during the lesson observation. I asked the pupils to practice some music that had been given to them. I let them go then stopped after 1minute. I asked the pupils how do we practice? What were they doing? This is where a discussion of practice slow and build up speed, break it down into smaller chunks. The interviewer was impressed that I got the pupils to think about this and how this can be a behaviour they can take for their next task. I think these competencies are as important in our teaching as the knowledge of music. Teaching pupils to be resilient, resourceful etc. will help them in other aspects of music making.

Vaughan Fleischfresser @VFleischfresser

Trust: Trust pupils to get things right; to get things wrong; to follow instructions; to create their own instructions; to create; to copy; to interpret; to follow them down whatever path they might take their learning or need their learning to go.

Acceptance: Acceptance of what the pupils can already do and what the pupils will eventually be able to do, both from the teacher and the pupils themselves. Accept and encourage acceptance of the differing thoughts and feelings that each will have about different types of music. Show them that accepting and learning from mistakes is the key to every path possible.

Encouragement: Encourage the pupils relentlessly. Encourage them to be vocal; to believe; to question; to be right; to be wrong; to learn from being right and being wrong; to create; to copy; to interpret; to go down whatever path their developing relationship with music might take them.

Honesty: Be open and honest with them so that they might be open and honest with you. Tell them the truth. Tell them when something is good and when something isn’t, and why. Ultimately, we need them to give us the answers, thoughts, and ideas that they have, rather than the ones they think we want.

Mirroring: Live the learning behaviours you want and need them to adopt. Walk the walk, so to speak.

David House @House_dg

Teacher behaviours to support student learning [effectively teacher modelling]: positive outlook, sense of focus, speaking clearly and articulately in full sentences, thinking “out loud” when going through a task, being clear and consistent with school rules and ethos, being ready to sit alongside students and work with them, illustrating the need to keep trying [resilience], being curious and asking questions “What if” [resourcefulness], listening carefully [reciprocity], openly reflecting on work in the lesson [reflectiveness] and using musical responses as often as possible.

Ewan McIntosh @ETMcINTOSH

Effective teacher behaviour should include:

• Planning engaging lessons what take into account pupil’s own musical journey/interests.
• Ensure that planning and activity outcomes take into account all the learner’s musicianship skills so that all learners can develop their own musicianship.
• Careful planning to ensure that all group work is carefully set up so that all members of the group work well and develop their musicianship.
• Taking an interest in all pupils that they teach and finding out and trying to take into account any informal music/music making that they are involved in.
• Help pupils to develop their own social and emotional skills and resilience through group work and making sure that all pupils have opportunities to contribute to the lesson.

Steven Berryman @steven_berryman

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