School in Focus - celebrating success in schools
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Bannockburn Primary School |
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The noises emanating from the library on the ground floor of Bannockburn Primary School in South East London conjure up a variety of images.
Urgent drumbeats suggest wheels rolling over metal; repetitive xylophone riffs hint at something more pedestrian; then the sudden crash of a cymbal disrupts the steady rhythmic flow.
It may sound like the chaos and noise of a random street scene, but in fact it is the mixed Year 5 and 6 class practising their carefully constructed musical composition, 'Victorian Scenes'.
We are hearing trains, fruit carts, bustling feet and the occasional flash of that new invention, the camera. Each composition is preceded by lines of the children's poetry.
Roaming the room, boosting pupil confidence with encouraging body language and nodding his head to the beat is Philip Davis, who has relinquished his role as a class teacher to raise the profile of music across the one-and-half-form entry school.
The rehearsal, ahead of a performance for parents, marks the end of a project in which Philip led the pupils as they explored Victorian images and text, drew word pictures and composed their own musical pieces to portray the sights and sounds of the 19th century—the time their school was built.
A similar exercise with another class has produced evocative words and music on the theme of solids, liquids and gases.
Both are examples of how Philip is embedding elements of music on every floor of this typical three storey Victoria school, while also encouraging greater flowering of skills and knowledge in literacy, history, science and every other curriculum area.
But the class teachers do not retire to the staffroom for a cup of tea while Philip takes their classes. They stay in the room to support his teaching and, more important, learn his methods, so that soon they will be comfortable using them on their own.
This is the key to Philip's role at Bannockburn. By going into every class at least once a week, he's running a form of continuous and informal INSET, modelling the methods he's been using in his own classroom for years. The aim is to raise the levels of learning above what they might be, and, at the same time, enrich the daily experience of the pupils.
“We have kids here who find learning very difficult, and who are, emotionally, all over the place,” explains the headteacher, Robert Carpenter. “By giving them these broadened opportunities in lessons, it makes a real difference to their self-esteem.”
Philip is eager to stress, however, that what he does in lessons can be done by any primary teacher. “I don't talk about flats and sharps,” he insists. “I talk about ears and listening. Lots of children are innately musical.”
Alongside the longer-term projects, in which classes use music as a means of welding together several curriculum areas, Philip uses elements of music in short bursts during 'normal' lessons, for a variety of ends.
There is the brain gym exercise in which he, or a pupil, beats an African drum as a whole class does energetic and coordinated movement; a one-minute 'hook-up,' where each pupil clasps their hands for some concentrated relaxation set to music from the CD payer; and creative writing, where contrasting passages of music, and images projected on the board, help stimulate words and sentences flowing onto exercise book pages.
In maths, times-tables and other rules of arithmetic are also set to music to help the learning process. Taken as a whole, these elements provide a wide variety of teaching and learning styles, they maximise motivation and protect against the boredom factor, and increase the likelihood that every child will be able to shine, at least some of the time.
“They love the physicality and the unpredictability,” says Philip. “If their attitude is right, then learning will happen.”
Bannockburn, in the London Borough of Greenwich, benefits from Excellence in Cities funding. Robert says he was able to pay for the staffing change, partly by Philip reducing his time to three days a week, and partly by a number of staff departures last summer.
He says measuring the concrete benefits at this early stage is difficult. But there has been a rise in the number of pupils involved in extra curricular activities, and in the scale of parental involvement in the school.
Among the objectives for the rest of this year are to formalise the autumn term's activities into a scheme of work, and to use musical elements to help raise standards in literacy, with particular attention being paid to the 'reluctant writers' in the school.
The decision to take Philip out of his own classroom was not an entirely uncontroversial one for Robert, particularly since he'd been a very successful Class 5/6 teacher in his own right. At first some of the teachers assumed that when Philip was in their classroom, they could take time off, which was emphatically not the idea.
Others felt daunted by the assumption that they could ever emulate his substantial musical expertise. But Robert was convinced the benefits were worth the risks. “I didn't want him working in isolation. I wanted the whole staff to see how music could be used. And it has succeeded in drawing the school community together.”
There was clear evidence of that point before Christmas, when the end of term school performances were organised by Philip, taking some pressure off other teachers.
Ruth Archer, the Year 3/4 teacher at Bannockburn, who has 25 years' experience in primary schools, talks of how Philip makes the children think and work together, and how his 'charisma' has a substantial motivational effect.
“It has also made me think about the way I ask children questions and the way I get them to ask questions,” she says.
