Formative Assessment in Music

I joined Braemar College late in 2021, teaching classroom music at Yrs 6, 7, 11 and 12 levels and loving the diversity of the age groups. I am from a family of educators, so being in education is as part of my DNA as much as being a musician. Over 35 years of teaching (primary-tertiary) and education design & delivery I have taught across performance practice, keyboard, choral, ensembles, orchestras, history, theory, musicology and also across eras/genres from medieval to 21C. My PhD is in performance and musicology—which started out in one era and instrument and finished in another. My secondary teaching experience has included the IB. One of my undergraduate degrees is specifically in Music Education/ Pedagogy, and I have supervised trainee teachers for the secondary system.

As a musician, one is always learning, reflecting, and evolving. Pedagogy is central to a life of a musician and is as old as the practice of music itself. Formative assessment is a critical process in music and these PLT sessions introduced me to theories of Dillon Williams.

I really enjoyed the PLT experience for several reasons, including the opportunity to meet members of staff from across different subject areas and campuses. Having this time to reflect together meant we could share and explore different methods and techniques, brainstorm and workshop together. And laugh about our failures. The peer reviews were also useful for this reason. These PLT sessions have also been valuable because of the explosion of new information now available on the psyche of a learner. Having these sessions strategically presented and followed through in a methodical, formulaic way has played a role in my cyphering my experiences into a format that suits the modern-day learner, specifically at Braemar.

I have been repackaging my knowledge of music to fit the Braemar school life. With one semester of class time to play with at the Middle School level, and with various skill levels from students, I focused the curriculum and teaching mainly on the performance experience, based around rhythm, with some literacy fundamentals. Students are bursting to play and sing music. But they need to know something before they can do it, which is very frustrating in this instant society. Bite-sized formulas were learned and applied within the context of the Kodaly/ Orff method, linking it not only to the Australian Curriculum but keeping an eye on preparing students for the VCE curriculum. I created a workbook to help organise and focus the student experience and designed a variety of tasks to suit neurodiversity in the classroom.

Listening is key to being a musician, so we also focussed on how to listen to music, how to listen to a rhythm and write it down with rhythmic dictation and, importantly, how to listen to each other in performance. Students learned to perform multi-lined scores with both pitches and rhythmic scores, and keep in time with each other whilst maintaining their own part. Students learned to perform without being selfconscious. Through the PLT I learned some Exit strategies used in other learning areas which I applied at the end of class. The great challenge in a dynamic school environment is to make maximum impact with minimum time and resources. The benefit to student learning was that the students learned several pieces of music, were able to read and perform them with confidence, and with self-awareness and self-control, and had fun doing so. They learned to operate with increased focus and greater self-awareness and control. I was amazed at how parched they were for this experience. Dr Jacqueline Ogeil

VCE Music Teacher.

The teacher has the single greatest impact on student learning

(Hattie, 2012; Marzano, 2003),