Saturday mornings in bed, usually with the dog who manages to navigate a path in are bliss, so you can imagine my reluctance when booking an FA Level 1 football coaching course that predominantly start on…Saturday mornings. Sarcastic grumblings aside it was a fantastic program and Andy Crowl who led most of the course was brilliant when working with us, and inadvertently gave me my next idea for a blog!
As a teacher I work on economising the time it takes to explain/model my objectives for my students to have more time to explore and create, basically, it comes down to making music accessible to all and not just the ones who performing/writing is innate. My lightbulb moment came when Andy went through the FA’s methodology of developing players and as I listened I started to ask myself can this be modified to my music lessons? Is there something here I can translate to students who don’t seem to click?
So, the course was all about focusing on the FA’s ‘four corners’ model of player development:
Breaking down these translates into:
In addition to this my coaching told us to aim for these each session:
- 70% ‘ball rolling’ time (players who are active within a session)
- Game related (the activities must be related to football)
- Winning/losing outcomes
The sessions themselves could be designed around one base activity which allows the coach to scaffold into more tasks and that individual target setting is a must; the encouragement is positive and challenges designed to bring out confidence.
Once I got this, I thought of these models and how they can be applied to a music lesson.
Here’s what I came up with:
- 70% ball rolling time = 60-70% music related/hands-on time
- Game related = Music related. Taking musical elements and writing in tasks which allow students to use them like they would in a proper gig environment (learning scales as ascending/descending crochets doesn’t serve a musical purpose I think
- Winning/losing outcomes = obviously no avert competition here as the aim is to make music that is honest and creative, imagine having to perform when one hasn’t nailed it and then made to feel a loser for it!
As for the base activity, there’s plenty of ideas you can start with such as playing a chord progression as our start, then move to arpeggios, then left-hand bass etc.
If we take a look at the four corner model you can easily adapt that too, merge the four into three as physical/technical relate to each other and change the technical areas to musician specific and you have yourself a nice methodology to base your schemes of work or lesson plans on!
Although this is in its infancy for me I have seen some results in my classes and as I continue to improve on my effectiveness as a teacher, I am very happy to find inspiration from other subjects to relate to my students.
Mike Wright Music Education 