Book Reviews: Teaching Music - Practical Strategies for KS3

My first impressions on receiving my copy of Teaching Music were that it was significantly bigger and contained far more information than I'd expected. I was pleased to recognise some of the names of the authors from other similar texts I'd read in the past, and was keen to dive in.

All the articles included have their merits, though I found some more applicable in my own teaching than others. Arguably the breadth of information on offer is a significant strength, and it would be unfair to expect that everything contained would be of use to all readers.

The opening article (‘Getting off to a flying start’ by Jane Werry) would be fantastic for beginner teachers establishing themselves in the classroom. Given the increased trend for trainee music teachers to come through more generalised ITT routes, this sort of subject-specific advice could be invaluable.

I was particularly impressed with the breadth of suggestions for song writing in John Kelleher's article ‘Songwriting and Composition’, and can see many of the approaches detailed being incredibly useful preparation for GCSE (or even as a scaffold for weaker composers in the early stages of KS4). While specified as a songwriting resource, this would give pupils a huge range of compositional skills, which could easily be applied to instrumental pieces too.

I found Richard Knight's article on ‘Engaging with the Western Classical Curriculum’ particularly useful. As someone who came to teaching having trained in the pop and jazz tradition, I often approach the world of western classical music with a degree of trepidation. While I have some knowledge of the classical repertoire, my ability to recognise pieces and pluck out examples pales in comparison to my grasp of the jazz canon, and I found the strategies and examples given here incredibly useful.

All the other articles are incredibly detailed, though tend to lean more towards more specific areas so don't have the broad appeal of the aforementioned sections. For example, Martin Said's piece on project-based learning was incredibly informative but is not something I'm looking to work into my practice at the moment. Similarly, having spent a number of years building our department's use of ICT provision (still a work in progress), I had less to gain from David Ashworth's wide-ranging piece, ‘Using Digital Resources’.

As mentioned, the wealth of information presented means that there should be a substantial amount which would be applicable to music teachers across all settings. The price of £39.99 might seem steep, but the book comes with an array of fantastic digital resources and supporting videos, many of which are ready to use in the classroom straight away. I would argue that the book represents great value for money, even if you were only to use a small section of it.