7 minute read
by Daisy Goldhagen 24
with spelling. Using Mark Making as an intervention does not remove the need for formal instruction on letter formation. Instead, it ensures a solid foundation from which to progress. A combination of both traditional letter formation and Mark Making activities would be beneficial.
How can using a Mark Making intervention programme help increase understanding of the pedagogical needs of pupils working on handwriting, especially those who are weak spellers? The importance of the emotional wellbeing of pupils when working on handwriting is highlighted as being influential on progress. Pupils’ mental wellbeing when approaching and discussing handwriting drew attention to the need of practitioners to better understand pupil needs. As stated above, the bottleneck effect caused when overloading the working memory was identified as a barrier to learning for weak spellers. However, analysis of the emotional impact also demonstrates how mental wellbeing can too be a barrier to learning. Pupils noted how handwriting affects their confidence across English and they felt their handwriting reflected their overall academic ability. A strict, traditional understanding of handwriting instruction, being centred upon reaching an end goal which is prescriptive and rigid, has the ability to negatively impact pupils’ mental wellbeing. Mark Making handwriting can be better understood as a reflection of personality, centred around creativity, design and difference. Mark Making enables learning by creating a safe and encouraging learning environment. Accurate formation of letters is important, but without an appreciation of variety and flair, it can stifle progress. Therefore, Mark Making can help practitioners increase pedagogical understanding, which can help facilitate greater progress and learning moving forward. - Tasks, such as working towards a pen licence and meeting handwriting targets, should be introduced earlier than Year 4, to avoid a significant gap in abilities developing and becoming noticeable to pupils. - Mark Making should be used in conjunction with letter formation work.
And for best results, Mark Making should be used first to establish mastery before progressing onto formal letter formation. - Mark Making can be adapted for use as an intervention group or used for whole-class teaching; it can be linked to topics and reflect pupil interests. - Class teachers and Art specialists could work together to incorporate Mark
Making art into the curriculum, offering a range of materials, tasks, and degrees of structure.
The scale of this study was limited. Further research into long term effects of using Mark Making, and the impact on intervention groups in different year groups, would be of use in the future. This study focuses on an intervention group who were both weak in spelling and at handwriting by exploring how adapting handwriting provisions can enable progression. In addition to this study, further research into adapting spelling provisions and whether this results in an impact on handwriting would be of interest. Continuing to explore the notion of automaticity, but from the perspective of mastering spelling, rather than the handwriting emphasis of this study, might also prove useful.
BIO Daisy Goldhagen has worked at the Prep School for three years. Previously, she studied at Durham University and holds a BA in Education Studies and Geography, an MA in Education Studies, and a PGCE.
Soundscapes of the self
Creative and Critical Projects in Classroom Music: Fifty Years of Sound and Silence was published by Routledge in November 2020 as a celebration of the innovative work of John Paynter and Peter Aston. The purpose was to build on the main themes of this work: the child as artist and the process of making music. The intention was to integrate practical work with critical and analytical thinking and consider where the next fifty years might lead in terms of music making.
My creative project, Soundscapes of the Self, was discussed in this work. In response to Paynter and Aston, it explores the nature of sound, the importance of understanding that true listening is hearing with attention, and how to explore the process of creating a soundscape which has a personal meaning. It considers how sounds can evolve into a composition and how to use the technologies which we have available to us in order to do so.
Places and communities have long been defined visually, though there is an increasing interest in investigating our sonic environment. This encompasses a wide range of practitioners, from architects to ecologists, and sound artists and composers. Murray Schafer, a Canadian composer, was fascinated by the sonic environment and how we popularised the idea of the ‘soundscape’. He was especially interested in exploring how we could make sense of the sonic environment (see Schafer 1993). Now with the easier availability of technologies, this offers an accessible means of composing.
A soundscape can be designed by the composer to represent an experience, a memory, or to evoke a sense of place within a community. Creating a soundscape of the self enhances one’s understanding of personal space and identity.
The very nature of these compositions are an exploration of sound and silence, relying less on the use of repeated rhythms or melodic patterns. Critical to the making of a soundscape is a refocused approach to listening. We are surrounded by sound and don’t often take the time to listen or to ‘hear with attention’. The American composer Pauline Oliveros, pioneer in the development of experimental and post-Second World War electronic music, emphasised the importance of ‘deep listening’ which is:
Listening in every possible way to everything possible to hear no matter what you are doing. Such intense listening includes the sounds of daily life, of nature, one’s own thoughts as well as musical sounds. Deep listening represents a sense of heightened awareness and awareness to all that is there.
(Oliveros 2002, 27)
The central principle of this project was to encourage the pupils to develop the concept of listening as being ‘hearing with attention’. We often discard the sounds around us as being unimportant. In order to achieve a state of deep listening we have to be aware of and include everything.
Such a state was evocatively promoted by Oliveros as, ‘Take a walk at night, and walk so silently that the bottoms of your feet become ears’ (1974, 5).
As a preliminary activity, the class were asked to sit quietly, closing their eyes to listen as deeply as possible to the surrounding sounds.
Upon a second time of listening, they were to make a note of the different types of sound that can be heard. These sounds were described in a table with reference to pitch, duration and timbre.
Pupils were asked if they felt they could represent these sounds visually. A useful exercise was to look at examples of other graphic scores, to demonstrate how composers have notated their work, not in the conventional sense, but through imaginative visual description.
As a second preliminary activity, using the work of sound ecologists Gage and Krause (see, for example, Krause 2008) we considered how sounds might be classified in terms of the respective fields of Biophony (birds and animals), Geophony (non-biological natural sounds) and anthrophony all sounds produced by humans.
These terms are used by those working to understand the ways in which the interactions of humans in their environment impacted upon ecological conservation and so linked with aspects of other subjects which the pupils were studying and aware of. We discussed the sounds you might hear walking in town, if you’re near a train station, a cafe, the sounds of Ashridge forest.
The aim of this creative project was to create a soundscape unique and personal to you and where you live. You could take an aspect of your day, or surroundings and document these, and create a composition from these elements. The pupils experimented first with taking a sound walk, to identify and record interesting sounds. Some chose to make an audio narrative of a specific place, simply by choosing a location and then leaving the recording running for a minute. They created a musical scrapbook of sound taking recordings from a variety of places. Working in pairs, sounds were selected with consideration to a variety of pitch, duration and intensity.
It was lovely to see the enthusiasm of the pupils who would come back having added to their sonic scrapbook, describing the sounds they had heard and how it could work in their composition.
There are different ways of approaching the compositional process. The collected sounds could be reproduced vocally or on instruments, or input into a computer programme, of which there are various examples. Different tracks can be produced and layered, or the sounds modified and altered, (for example, by time stretching particular sounds). Alternatively, the use of recorded
