Can anyone explain how music is taught in year 8. Does it vary from school to school or is there a recognised framework? My daughter is currently focusing in music on the 1950's and working in pairs she has had to write the words of a song and then compose a tune with chords and melody. The girl she is paired with doesn't play any instruments. They were told to write words, then write chords under the words and then to make up a melody. The guidance they were given was they can only use certain chords G, C, F, Am, Dm and can only use the notes from those chords in the melody. However there is no concept of playing in a particular key or with a set time signature. The girl my daughter is paired with is not very cooperative and my daughter has to play the keyboard while the other girl sings the song, and this is being assessed.
I would have thought it would be better to get them thinking about various rhythms and how these can be fitted to the words before making them compose actual music.
At parents evenings we only meet the form teacher and not subject teachers so I feel a little in the dark about the way music is taught. Can anyone enlighten me?

My own most recent experience of this was a couple of years ago when I was teaching a year 11 boy who was writing complicated compositions but who was unable to write down a simple rhythm from dictation and with hardly any knowledge of the instruments he was writing for.
It doesn't seem to be uncommon to ask children to perform tasks for which the foundations have not been prepared.

For KS3 My class didn't really do much, our music dept. was a mess though, 8 different teachers throughout year 9, all we did was keyboard work

from what I have seen children *should* be taught to read music and have basic keyboard skills in year 7.
Often the case is that there will be perhaps 1 or 2 musical children in a class, and the rest of them simply do not want to be there. Were the teachers to teach theory the majority would not be able to cope, therefore music must be made 'accessible'. This continues throughout GCSE, many people will get by barely able to read music.

When I compare grade 5 theory with music GSCE, there is no comparison. Grade 5 theory is much, much easier.

Well...the main problem was that you either wanted to be there, or as in the majority of the class, you didn't. Hardly anyone could play an instrument to a good standard. We did lots of keyboard/guitar work - just playing little tunes, which was a bit boring for me at the time, being grade 4 ish on keyboard. We did lots of singing with the teacher playing guitar/piano.

We only learnt the real basics of music theory, ie. this is an "f", this is a treble clef, as obviously, some people were not musically literate at all.

I don't really think we learnt about styles of music or anything...

I thought that music at Key stage 3 was quite simple and not very exciting. Although I was grade 4 when I started Key stage 3.

I would give it a mark 6/10 and that only depends on what teacher you had and what you learnt.

Hope this helps

Music Man

I find the exact opposite, at least as far as where actual 'this means that' type theory is concerned. Give the majority of my class a grade ONE theory paper and they will come look at you like you're crazy. Cue piles of unfinished G1 papers in our class box.

Our old music teacher used to try and get everyone to grade 1 standard theory, some took the exam, some didn't. however I think that must have still been a real challenge - about half our music class can't read ANY music Infact there are only 5 of us out of about 20 that aren't singers or guitasrists.

I don't think there's any set curriculum for KS3 music, although the school may have there own. I had the same problem as your daughter in year 8 - I had a teacher I really didn't get on with and always got paired with my non-musical friends. What you have described sounds very familiar, it's exactly what I've experienced. Things did get better for me last year (year 9) when I had a great teacher who realised that I was a long way ahead of most of the class and twisted the tasks to make them challenging and interesting for me.
If you're not happy or not sure about how your daughter's being taught then have you thought about ringing the school? This is what my mum did in year 8, although the only result was that the teacher gave me a GCSE compostition task and sat me in the corner

It was the same at my high school. Out of a class of 30, only 3 of us could play instruments and we were aboutgrade 3 standard (on different instruments). It was always on keyboards work- playing single line melodies to Jingle Bells It was very demoralising as I could play the piano to grade 2 standard and flute to grade 2, so spending hours of lessons plodding through these exercises were useless. I think worst of all, we had to share a keyboard. On the other hand, the other 27 were totally illiterate and the teachers found it difficult to make music accessible to them (spending an hour with a foot on a CHair to link it with CHord ). Though in Year 8, the teacher, who now teaches me A-level and I knew since year 6, started to teach our class and things improved- because he made music accessible to alot of the class. We did lots of work in groups, and most importantly he set harder and more challenging work for those who could already play an instrument.

Although I think there are national guidelines, I don't think there is actually a set syllabus - our education for years 7 and 8 was rather all over the place (we did next to no theory, which led to entertainment when we hit GCSE and many people couldn't read music). This changed when our current head of music arrived and she wrote new schemes of work for lower school, so now they do theory as well as the practical stuff.
It seems that teachers can teach what and how they want to. I now go to a split site 6th form (my old school and a nearby one) and both of the music deparments there are fantastic and the teaching is geared to the backgrounds of the kids at each school, but I know that not all teachers are like this - I have experienced less-than-enthusiastic teachers before, and sadly teaching music requires a lot of effort, energy and enthusiasm, so if the teacher doesn't have that the kids suffer.
The work that they have been set does sound a bit hard for year 8's. That is the sort of stuff we were doing in GCSE! Surely it would be better that they understand time signatures, rhythms, cadences, phrasing, chord patterns etc. before they start such a big project? Is this a newly qualified teacher or an experienced one? It may be that it's a new teacher who hasn't quite figured out the abilities of different age groups or the most effective way to teach something like this yet. Or they aren't expecting a masterpiece and just want to give the kids a challenge to see what happens.

I remember doing precisiely the same exercise when I was in Y8.

The problem with KS3 music, is that very little curriculum time is devoted to it. Usually about an hour a week or so, maybe a bit more but not much. So when a class starts in Y7, there is a wider range of abilties within the group than in any other subject.
To the teacher this poses a problem and with so little lesson time, not every single lesson can be spent going through basics such as rhythms and cadences. In most schools, all Y7's do a little bit of work on recognising notes on treble and bass clefs, and spotting them on a keyboard, simple note values and major and minor scales. However when several people in a class may have already done grade 5 theory, repeatedly looking at crotchets and minims and be very tedious. And so most lesson's at KS3, are composed of doing things that do not require too much musical knowledge but that allow the people with a more musical background to express this. Composistion falls very much under this catergory as most children can at least sing or play a melody on the keyboard, while others can experiment with chords, cadences and complicated rhythms. Things like graphic score are also often used
Again as only a small percentage of the class goes on to do GCSE music, and so at KS3 teachers feel it is impostant the lesson should enjoyable just as much as productive, to those who are not going to continue music beyond Y9. Therefore the work covered is a lot more general, rather than theory specific. Things I can remember covering were, blues and jazz, pop music, african percussion, graphic score, carnival music and the samba, gospel, film music, japanese music etc etc.

I personally found music in y7-9 really enjoyable and there was a large performance aspect, as during each topic we composed a piece, in pairs or small groups, which we then perfromed to the class. I also know that no-one, musical or not, struggled with it and everyone really enjoyed it. Out of my year, everyone who then went on to do GCSE music got at least a B.

From a Scottish viewpoint this is an astonishing thing to read because of the way school music education has changed over the years. Not all that long ago, our Standard Grades (like English GCSEs) were equivalent to AB Grade 5 for theory and practical and our Highers (halfway between GCSE and A Level), which were generally taken one year later, were equivalent to AB Grade 8.

I tell this to people I know at school and they say, "Well, yes, isn't that how things should be?" But it's not how things are for them. Nowadays Standard Grade is equivalent to Grade 3, Higher to Grade 4 and Advanced Higher (A Level or thereabouts) to Grade 5. People who are taking Advanced Higher Physics have to know about relativity, so I don't think we're exactly talking about parity of subject here.

Actually, those equivalents may be slightly optimistic, because I think they've been dumbed down yet further in the last year or so. I do know - from several sources - that it's possible to pass your Standard Grade without knowing what a treble clef is.

This is why it is now possible for someone to leave university with a music degree, get a job in a school and be unable to help pupils advance beyond Grade 5. On that subject, I recently spoke to a head of faculty at a school in Glasgow and suggested that there may be some music pupils who know more about the subject than their teachers do. "Easily," she said.

at the very biggining of each year untill Y10, clapping rythems and singing one song.
This year, we are doing 'structures'.
After that,half of the class would do keyboard, and other half cuebase(quite difficult. You have to work out the chords in a short piece of music), mixing music, and the 'tom and jerry project'(a thing where everyone watches a tom and jerry episode ( no sound) and the groupe makes sounds from various percussion instruments).

My daughter who has just gone into year 7 seems to be doing a mix of practical and theory. A Medieval Dance was one of the first things they did. They have also composed a rap and are starting to learn notes on the stave.

It's easy for my daughter but it is quite difficult for some of the others, the music teacher now only asks her questions if no one else is able to answer them. Having said that she is enjoying her lessons and other Music related activities offered, which are infinately better than nothing which she experienced at Primary School.

I know we've had this discussion before but shouldn't the Primaries be doing more to broarden the Musical experience of our children?

Definately, the only musical things in my primary school were choir and singing every friday morning in assemblies, though when I got to year 8 (year 7 over in england i think) there was so much offered.

I am a tiny bit annoyed as there are 3 people in my GCSE Class at grade 8 standard, whilst I'm doing grade 3 Though I seem to be doing quite well, and it's awkward as I find practicals harder than composition and written exams

I have found that where music is a compulsory subject or where there is very little choice in the first place, like the others have said, the majority of people are not musical and will not have wanted to be there in the first place. This makes it extremely hard for teachers as they cannot teach basic practical and theory knowledge without boring the class(i really feel for teachers in this situation because there is really nothing they can do). So what ends up happenning is that students get to make nice sounds out of instruments without knowing what they actually are and listen to the teacher say stuff about composers which goes in one ear and out the other. At the end of the day, it has come to absolutely no use, a waste of strength for the teacher and a waste of time for students.