It is a cool Autumn morning. The first lesson of the day is with a Year 4 class who are very excited because I have told them we will be playing ukuleles, for the first time, today. We begin in time-honoured fashion with me singing ‘Hello Everyone’. It’s a Year 4 class so we are using the pitches do, mi, so and la (C, E, G and A). I am keeping it in C major today because these four notes are the open string tones of a ukulele.
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Ofsted Inpection. Music Deep Dive. February 2024
MUSIC ‘Deep Dive’
Walking into the building I meet a governor busy with blue tac. It’s not going to be a normal day. It never is. Up in the Music Room I remove my weekly timetable from the wall because we don’t want the inspectors to realise that we are not following the usual timetable. Glancing at my emails I read a warning about suspicious men in the area taking photos of children outside schools. Police advice has been emailed to all staff.
At 8.20 all the staff meet the lead inspector and the two other inspectors. “We are here to support you, just do what you normally do” etc. etc. As if! Who is kidding who here?
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A day in the Life. Halloween
I arrive at school at 7.45. I spend the first part of the day making sure I am ready for the various activities ahead. At 8.30 I teach a one-to-one piano lesson for half an hour. We look at a two pieces together. I draw attention to the chords that makes up each bar of these basic I-IV-V tunes. At 9 o’clock I take a call from the office: one of the trumpet students has returned her trumpet because she is going to stop. I did not know about this. I look at some emails and see that the trumpet teacher is ill today. I go to several classrooms to let the trumpet students know that there won’t be any lessons today.