Overview

Being the best teacher for my students always had and always will be my professional teaching aim.  Trying to implement and create new and exciting ways for the students to learn is important to me.  A colleague of mine who I taught with at the beginning of my career, really showed me the importance and benefits of continuously updating and refining units.  This has been imbedded within me ever since and I have never taught the same unit twice – there are always changes and updates.  

The unit of work I have chosen is from the new Queensland Senior Music Syllabus 2019.  Unit 2 – Identities is a 14 week unit where students explore four main identities – social, cultural, personal and political. This unit is the second out of four which are taught over year 11 and 12.  The unit runs in semester 2 year 11.  The students are building on their knowledge and skills within the curriculum and extending their learning throughout this unit.  I taught this unit for the first time this year and I taught it very differently.  The unit that I previously taught was ok, look it worked, but I had to make many adjustments along the way. The students didn’t seem to understand the importance of the unit and were not invested as much as I hoped.  With any new curriculum the first year is always a bit of trial and error, give it a go and see what happens basically!  For these reasons (and potentially many more that I haven’t even realised yet) I felt that it needed refining and adjusting, and it seemed like an inquiry framework would fit well.  The unit has been completely overhauled, the only elements which are the same are the unit title and curriculum requirements/unit objectives set by QCAA (Queensland Curriculum and Assessment Authority).  

Throughout this unit I want students to have an authentic learning journey and discovery with music.  Find something they are interested in and zoom in on that.  The students at my school have a wide range of interests within music (which makes my job so enjoyable) and I want them to explore these interests which I feel this unit allows.  Sometimes curriculum dictates what genres of music students should study, repertoire they need to learn and music they need to know about.  However, this unit gives them the flexibility to find their own journey of inquiry that interests them – sorry for using the journey word there but it fit!