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Chapter 5 What is ‘Best Practice’?

5.2.1 Adapting Provision to Suit Pupils’ Needs

The most prominent aspect of ‘best practice’ described by stakeholders was the belief that teaching needed to be individually tailored to meet students’ needs. This was true at both classroom and school level as demonstrated by the following quotes from school policy documents and Ofsted reports:

We recognise that some groups of learners have learning needs that require us to provide specialised curricula, assessment and teaching.

(School 1, Site 1, Documents)

When planning, teachers set suitable learning challenges and respond to children's diverse learning needs. The children have barriers to learning and they have individual requirements specific to their special need. Teachers take account of these requirements and make provision to support individuals or groups of children and thus enable them to participate effectively in curriculum and assessment activities.

(School 2, Documents)

Teachers plan their lessons exceptionally thoroughly and individually, dependent upon the skills, abilities and aptitude of each pupil.

(School 3, Documents)

Students’ needs were primarily assessed in relation to what practitioners felt each student needed to be happy, healthy and safe, as well as what would help them to prepare for a future in which they could live with as much independence as possible.

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Students’ needs were therefore much more frequently associated with non-musical goals and learning outcomes than musical ones, with each school differing in the amount of emphasis they placed on the importance of students developing musical skills and abilities. For School 1 Site 1, for example, music was not taught as a stand- alone subject. Instead, music was used as a ‘vehicle’ to enable students to develop functional skills such as physical, social or communication skills. It was therefore very rare that a student would have a musical goal listed on their PLP. For Schools 2 and 3, however, more emphasis was placed on striking a balance between developing both musical and non-musical skills. Therefore, students’ needs in both of these areas were assessed by teaching staff in relation to their Individual Education Plans (IEPs) and Education Health and Care Plans (EHCPs).

One key element of adapting provision to suit pupils’ needs was the need to ensure that lessons were pitched at the right level for pupils. ‘Pitching it at the right level’1 specifically refers to ensuring that planned learning activities were suitably challenging yet not too difficult for students to participate in. This was not always straightforward. As each school’s approach to teaching and learning was highly personalised to individual students’ needs, the level of differentiation needed in the classroom was considerable. This is one of the reasons why students in Schools 2 and 3 were often split into two classes for each year group (grouped by ability). Doing so allowed teaching staff to pitch lessons at different levels depending on which class they were teaching. Similarly, School 1 Site 1 not only structured their four classes by age, but also by the general learning stage the students had reached. This meant that the pace of the lessons might be faster or slower depending on the general level of understanding of the students in each class. Lesson objectives would also differ. The Class 4 Teacher at School 1 Site 1 explained:

It has to be pitched at a level where; I mean, even between Class 3 and Class 4 it’s different and so I wouldn’t necessarily do loud and quiet with Class 3 because they wouldn’t have that understanding of what was going on. I might do it as an

activity that was sort-of an experiential activity but I wouldn’t expect them to get the concept of loud and quiet. Whereas the intensive interaction with the

instruments is more useful for them. Whereas Class 4 can learn how to use

1 Throughout the following chapters, subthemes are placed within single quotation marks to

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instruments and how to make noises with different instruments; and then, again, one of the classes on the main-site would be able to maybe play with rhythms.

(School 1, Site 1, Practitioner Interview, Class 4 Teacher)

In this way, the content of lessons was altered depending on the perceived needs of the students, as assessed by teaching staff.

Sometimes practitioners would pitch lessons at the wrong level. There are a number of themes which intersect with this which are discussed in section 5.2.3 of this chapter and sections 6.2.4 and 6.2.9 of Chapter 6. ‘Knowing the students’, ‘being a visiting practitioner’ and ‘holding negative attitudes and beliefs about disability’ (be these conscious or subconscious), in some instances affected the level at which staff initially pitched a lesson. One example of a combination of these factors was the first session of a six-week-long after-school music club led by two visiting music

practitioners at School 3. This after-school club was open to all students at the school. As such, the visiting practitioners were required to devise music activities for a broad age-range (ages 2-19 years). This made it difficult for them to pitch the session at the right level for all of the students in the group. Furthermore, because the two workshop leaders were visiting practitioners, it was unclear how much knowledge they had about the students in the group before the first session. Below is a descriptive overview of the content of this session:

Vignette 5.1: School 3 After-School Music Club (13.04.2016)

The students are seated in a semicircle on chairs in the dining hall/gymnasium. There are also several students who are wheel- or power-chair users present who are seated in their own chairs. The students form a large, mixed age and ability group with pupils ranging from the early years class to post-16.

A teacher wheels a trolley of hand-held percussion instruments into the room. The workshop leaders call the group’s attention. They introduce themselves and explain that they’re going to be running workshops every week on a Wednesday after school – this is the first one. One workshop leader takes the lead (henceforth: primary workshop leader) and the other (henceforth: secondary workshop leader) provides support throughout the session (by bringing the primary workshop leader instruments and helping to demonstrate during the signed/sung activities). The primary workshop

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leader explains to the group that they’re all going to have lots of fun today but first she needs to learn their names. To do this they’re going to sing a song (Hickety Pickety Bumble Bee from Reynolds, Valerio, Bolton, Taggart, and Gordon’s (1998) ‘Let’s Play Music’). The primary workshop leader demonstrates what she would like the group to do: Everyone will chant ‘hickety pickety bumble bee, can you say your name for me’ in a 6/8 rhythm and, in turn, each pupil will respond with their name: ‘my name is

[name]’. Some of the students are able to do this without issue. However, the activity is difficult for pupils who use voice output communication aids (VOCAs) as they cannot keep to time. These pupils try to take part as best they can. The TAs supporting the group are very good at encouraging VOCA users to have a go. They also ensure that the workshop leaders wait for the pupil to input the sentence into their VOCAs before moving onto the next student.

At the end of this first activity the primary workshop leader talks the group through the second activity (a chant about soup and chopping vegetables). The

workshop leader introduces the activity slowly and clearly. Again, pupils with VOCAs find it difficult to participate in this chanting activity. No additional instruments or assistive music technologies are embedded into the activity in order to make it more inclusive for these pupils. Even the actions (tapping the palm of your left hand with your right hand in a chopping motion) are difficult for this particular cohort as many have physical impairments. This does not have any bearing on their intellectual

capacity and most would be able to take part with more inclusive provision. The pupils in this cohort mostly just sit and watch the other students taking part. One TA decides to take one of the pupils out of the workshop. It’s not clear where. Another TA who is sat near to me helps a pupil to input the whole of the chant into their VOCA. She turns to me and says: “I’m not sure if this is a good idea but it’s worth a try.”

After this activity, the music workshop leaders announce that they’re going to hand out some instruments for the pupils to play. They give each pupil a boom-whacker or a maraca. Boom-whackers are given to the pupils who are able to physically play them (i.e. those who are not wheelchair users). Those who are physically unable to play boom-whackers are given a maraca to play. The primary workshop leader leads the group in a call and response rhythm game (i.e. the primary workshop leader plays a rhythm and the pupils have to play it back to her). Pupils are mostly very good at this although some have lost interest in the workshop and are playing independently (for

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example, Ishrat, an EYFS student, is wandering around the semi-circle trying to gather up all of the boom-whackers for himself). After a few rounds of this rhythm game, the primary workshop leader asks for some volunteers from the group to come up and lead a rhythm for the rest of the group to copy. Several of the older students volunteer to do this. They seem to really enjoy having the opportunity to lead.

Next, the primary workshop leader explains to the group that they’re going to sing some nursery rhymes. She begins to sing Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. Some pupils join in but, again, this singing activity is difficult for pupils who use VOCAs. The primary workshop leader asks the group to put their hands up if they’d like to volunteer another nursery rhyme to sing. No one volunteers so the primary workshop leader suggests that they sing Humpty Dumpty. Whitney, a post-16 student sitting next to me, turns to me and says: “I was going to say something then, but I won’t”. I ask her what she was going to say and she replies: “Nothing. It’s just that some of these songs are a little [pulls a facial expression which indicates frustration]”

Whitney later recounted her feelings about this workshop to me in her interview. When I asked how she felt about the after school music club she expressed that she thought the activities were “babyish”:

W: […] but you understand why they were babyish because we had other students [that were younger] and we had to just, like, cope with it. But I would've liked to have figured like, other songs that were, like, Frozen or something like that – but they were just like for 2 year olds and…

I: [Laughs]

W: …they were! But they were like 5 or 6 [years old] and they've got disabilities and so we had to just go with it.

(School 3, Student Interview, Whitney)

Whitney was understandably frustrated that the visiting music practitioners had pitched the session so low. She was accepting of the difficulties associated with having such a diverse group of students to teach but knew that this rendered the session inappropriate for her.

The ability to be flexible and make changes to planned teaching and learning were important here. The workshop leaders, of course, quickly realised that they had

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pitched their sessions at far too low a level for some of the students taking part. However, the level was appropriate for some of the younger students. To address the differing learning needs of these two groups of students, the visiting practitioners, in collaboration with some of the permanent teaching staff at the school, devised an alternative arrangement whereby the students would be split into two groups; a younger group and an older group. The secondary workshop leader would lead sessions with the younger group (which would take place in the EYFS classroom) and the primary workshop leader would lead sessions with the older students in the dining

hall/gymnasium. For some of the older students, this basic level of differentiation still remained inappropriate as several of the post-16 students were more musically

advanced than their peers. It was therefore decided that these students would be given the opportunity to support the secondary workshop leader in leading her sessions with the younger students. Whitney was one of the students who accepted this offer. When I asked if she preferred helping out with the younger students to taking part in the music workshop as a participant she said:

W: It were better when [I] were helping but we still did the same songs so it were just, I didn’t enjoy it.

I: You still thought it was a bit babyish?

W: Yeah. I thought "oh it's gonna sound good, there's gonna be like guitars!" and stuff like that but, I was a bit disappointed really.

(School 3, Student Interview, Whitney)

It was clear that Whitney wanted to do more than just play percussion instruments, sing nursery rhymes and take part in musical games. She wanted to learn how to play an instrument and gain experience of performing in an ensemble. Even when adapted, the level of participation required from her for the after school club was still too low.

Teachers were clear that, when adapting provision to suit pupils’ needs it was important to admit when they had made a mistake in judgement. The School 2 Singing Teacher explained:

I think I’ve become quite skilled at realising what will fly and what won’t and I don’t have any problem in saying “right, I’ve made a mistake. That’s not going to work” and I just pull it and move on to something else. I will not flog a dead horse forever because there’s no joy on anybody’s part and I think there’s nothing to be gained by just simply keeping at it and keeping at it because they’ll just switch off,

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they won’t gain anything from it, and so you lose all the positive aspects that we spoke about earlier; of their sense of achievement that, you know, their sense of personal attainment and enjoyment, because if you enjoy doing something you’ll work a lot harder at it, so if you start putting a block to that, you’re going to lose somewhere down the track.

(School 2, Practitioner Interview, Singing Teacher)

Teachers believed that if lessons were not pitched at the right level and suitably adapted to suit students’ needs and abilities then students would lose focus and ultimately cease engagement with the activity. This can be seen in practice in the description of the after-school music club at School 3 (see Vignette 5.1). By the time the workshop leaders had reached their third activity, they had lost the engagement of several of the students. Suitably adapting provision to suit pupils’ needs is therefore deemed

imperative if students are to engage with musical activities and learning is to take place.