“If music teachers want to improve their classroom teaching, to whom do they turn to for help?”

The first [and possibly best] port of call is probably to turn to other music teachers. But...

The first [and possibly best] port of call is probably to turn to other music teachers. Since most music teachers work in small or single person departments, they are going to have to go outside of school to do this. Local networks of teachers who meet regularly to share ideas could be the answer, but these opportunities seem to be few and far between. Perhaps this is a consequence of schools now being seen to be in 'competition' with one another as they fight to keep student intake at sustainable levels? So a successful music department is probably less likely to want to give all their best ideas to the rival school down the road.  

We all know that there are excellent teachers out there who are ready and willing to share best practice. They write blogs, articles/resources for magazines and post their stuff on our website.

Effective support needs to go beyond good teachers merely talking about what they do and sharing resources. Even putting on training days for teachers is often of limited usefulness. We can all make singing activities come alive when our cohort is a roomful of music teachers – it's taking the ideas back to your own classroom that is the real challenge. The missing link we need is to see teachers demonstrating quality music teaching in their classrooms.... with students.

[Warning: what follows is bound to come across as an opportunist plug, but I think it is worth reading!]

In my newly published resource “Teaching Music” [Rhinegold Education] there are many videoclips of classroom activity which bring alive the resources they exemplify. For teachers who are looking for new ideas to stimulate and refresh their teaching, without having to take the time out to visit other schools, this couild be the way forward. For example, in the first chapter of our book, Jane Werry not only talks about the difference between demonstrating and modelling; there is a short videoclip showing her doing exactly this with a group of students. Another example: one of her baseline testing activities involves students copying simple melodies in a call/response fashion during a whole class session. You can download her resources and watch her going through this with one of her classes.

This, I think, has to be the way forward. Gone are the days of regular music insets and two day residentials with county music advisers. We are going to to have to rely more and more on quality interactive multimedia resources such as “Teaching Music”. By the way, you can download Jane's chapter for free from http://www.rhinegoldeducation.co.uk/download-the-app/