Image: Alan Herron
What’s in a name? Alan Herron investigates music terminology and its effect on learning outcomes in the primary curriculum
As a newly qualified music teacher, part of my first job was running a school strings programme, delivering whole-class violin and cello lessons in Years 1, 2 and 3. Initially this facet of the job didn’t faze me because as a principal study cellist, I had just completed 2 years of study at the RNCM specialising in teaching strings. However, increasingly over the course of my first couple of years in the job I
found myself asking: ‘Why aren’t they getting it?’ Something was holding my pupils back, but I couldn’t work out what it was. This was before Wider Opps and so there was very little available in the way of teaching materials and advice and the fact that I happened to be teaching in an international school in Rome, left me feeling isolated and bewildered.
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