Reading Matters Robert Legg casts a critical eye over some Integrated Music Methods Here's a puzzle. This autumn, two Year 7 children join a large comprehensive school. The first has parents who aren't especially interested in music. She attended a primary school where provision was patchy, and missed out on large parts of her musical entitlement. She has little practical experience of manipulating sounds and has little or no understanding of music notation. On receiving her timetable, she discovers that she will be studying music on Monday mornings with Miss Crotchet, a new and enthusiastic young teacher.

The other child has had a very different musical experience thus far. Enrolled in baby music classes as a toddler, he went on to play the recorder, learning basic staff notation around the age of six. Encouraged by his musical parents, he took up the violin a few years later, receiving a half-hour lesson once a week during term time. This tuition, supplemented by daily practice, has enabled him to achieve Grade 5 this summer. He is an able sight-reader, a confident performer, and a strong singer to boot. Examining his new timetable, he finds that he, too, can look forward to spending Monday mornings in the music room with Miss Crotchet.

The challenge facing poor Miss Crotchet hardly needs elaboration. Something like 1,000 hours of one-to-one tuition and supervised practice separate these two pupils. And, lest we forget, there are twenty-eight other individuals in the class, each with his or her unique collection of experiences and skills.
Rigorous differentiation - or Personalised Learning as it is now often known - will be absolutely essential if these children are all to succeed. And Miss Crotchet will need access to the very best teaching resources in order to survive.

Our puzzle, of course, is a problem all too real for music teachers up and down the country. It's hard to imagine any other subject area in which groups of pupils so different in ability are routinely taught together. In fact, the scale of the problem is such that it's no exaggeration to say that the situation described here is the norm rather than the exception.The need for personalised learning is understood not least by the good folk at Ofsted, whose current focus on the ‘Every Child Matters' (ECM) agenda brings differentiation to the forefront of most teachers' minds. In recent years, however, authors and publishers have struggled to keep up.

Integrated methods for teaching music to Key Stage 3 (KS3) classes, using a topic-based approach, have for the most part resisted opening the Pandora's Box of Personalised Learning. Even the brilliant and imaginative New Music Matters series by Chris Hiscock and Marian Metcalfe, published back in 1998, tends to assume a default target audience of 30 pupils of equal ability. In a perfect world, music teachers would have the time to devise bespoke curricula for each of their KS3 pupils. In reality, the pressures of a typical working week at school make this impossible. Instead, therefore, we rely on off-the-peg materials, adjusting where necessary to suit the pupils in our care.
This year, though, two major companies are set to change the publishing landscape with the timely addition of two brand-new, ready-made series for KS3. Rhinegold's Elements suite explores music through topics such as ‘melody', ‘rhythm', ‘harmony', ‘form and structure', and ‘texture and timbre'. Meanwhile, Heinemann's new Opus series, created by Chris Hiscock, Karen Brock and Peter Roadknight, divides the Key Stage chronologically into sections for Years 7, 8 and 9. Both publishers include a variety of written materials, audio recordings and CD-ROMs.
So how do these exciting new resources measure up to our challenge? The offering from Rhinegold is accessible and clearly presented, with plenty of space on the page. In common with most integrated ‘methods', the Elements series features a comprehensive teacher book, to be used alongside the less detailed pupil books. Simply illustrated with line drawings, both parts feature well-written text that will be comprehensible to most children within the age range.

The key question, though, is how will the Elements tasks cater for pupils of widely divergent abilities. At first glance, it doesn't look good. One of the first activities to be presented in ‘Melody' is a fill-in-the-gaps task involving sequences. Three tunes are given, and pupils asked to compose a rising or falling sequence for each one. It's probably fine for the ‘average' child but unbelievably tedious for the high achiever and too notation-based for the pupil who struggles. The third melody is in E flat major, which, for a lower ability student in Year 7 is quite a tall order.
Further tasks in the Elements series allow for a degree of ‘differentiation by outcome' – that is, they present a common task that can be completed at various levels according to the ability of the pupil. For example, in ‘Form and Structure' a composing task invites pupils to invent music for an imaginary film. Here the teacher's book nods in the direction of Personalised Learning by suggesting that you can adjust the length of the task to suit the particular groups of pupils. However, the stated learning objective – ‘to compose a melody for a scene' – is the same for all pupils. Effective teachers – not to mention Ofsted inspectors – would certainly expect a more detailed discussion here. What basic aims of the task will students achieve? How much will the average student cover? What can we expect of the very best pupils? These details are sadly lacking.

The pre-publication materials available from Opus 1 look much more promising. The wide range of activities and tasks makes it easier for teachers to pick and choose something suitable for each group of children. And, crucially, the teacher's book provides differentiated learning outcomes, proposing what can be expected from pupils of varying abilities. The ‘Latin beat' topic is a good example of the attention that Opus pays to personalised learning.
Here, the guide tells us that lower-ability pupils will participate in group compositions ‘using given ideas only', whilst the average student will contribute to the same piece ‘using and adapting given ideas'. From the most-able students, meanwhile, we can expect ‘a leading contribution … creating new ideas … with imagination and appropriate style.' Handier still is an appendix that allows the teacher to convert statements such as these into the equivalent National Curriculum level – a feature that facilitates speedy report writing and effective record keeping. Opus displays this attention to detail at every turn, making it a truly child-centred and teacher-friendly resource.
Of course, there's no such thing as the perfect resource and some degree of adaptation will be necessary to accommodate pupils with particularly unusual needs. Further extension materials will be needed for Grade 8 virtuosi, whilst the very slowest pupils will require more support in order to access their learning. For schools with money to spare, the Elements suite may prove useful as a second resource that could be dipped into as required. As a core curriculum, however, the pre-publication materials available for Opus suggest that it's a more versatile, more thoughtful publication.
www.heinemann.co.uk
www.ofsted.gov.uk
www.rhinegold.co.uk