Shropshire Music Service

Notes for the first (yellow) level and the second (green) level of Music Explorer are available as pdf files as follows:

 yellow level notes and green level notes

As a joint venture between Shropshire Music Service and the North West Shropshire Excellence Cluster, a new band for wind, brass and percussion players is being created.

It will meet weekly from 4:00pm - 5:00pm with the first rehearsal on April 17th 2007.

There will be a ‘taster’ session at Gobowen Primary School on Friday March 9th at 1:30pm with parents welcome to hear the results of the workshop at 3:30pm.

This terms briefings for art and/or Music co-ordinators will be as follows:

Shrewsbury Training and Development Centre - March 15th 4:15

Bishop Mascall Centre Ludlow - March 20th 4:15

Walford and North Shropshire College Oswestry - March 21st 4:1

University Campus Priorslee March 22nd - 4:15

The main focus of the agenda will be self and peer assessment.

Today saw an excellent rehearsal for a major pair of concerts later this year.  This seasons repertoire include music from Mission Impossible, Dances with Wolves, West Side Story, Miss Saigon, Les Miserable, The Big Country and Gladiators.  The next rehearsal is on Sunday February 18th from 10:00am -3:00pm with concerts as follows:

Albrighton hall Hotel (Shropshire County Council Charity concert for Hope House) - Friday evening March 16th (time to be confirmed via this posting - probably 7:30pm - Tickets available from Shirehall - details of this special fund-raising event to be posted here.
Church Stretton School - Sunday March 18th at 2pm - tickets available on the door. Tickets £4.

A few places left on the music and mathematics course on Tuesday 23rd January 2007 in Shrewsbury. The morning course will explore the use of patterns in music and mathematics through a wide range of practical activities, also looking at higher level thinking and will have direct application to the creative classroom. Contact the Shropshire Advisory Service for further details.

Post-course note: The course provided some good practical composition work which has been recorded onto CD and copied for course members. Materials used on the course are available on my Digitalbrain site at this link

The course will be repeated next year - watch this space for details.

The government have announced this week that there will be new money for music education to support vocal work in schools.  This sum of £10m (for the nation) will not provide a huge sum for each LA but is a positive move which I applaud.

The Shropshire Music Service will be working with headteachers in all SDG groups to see what impact we can make and new opportunities we can provide in supporting this new initiative.

More information via the BBC

I’ve placed some photos of Shrewsbury’s most recent flood this week in my area of Shropshire.Digitalbrain.com (keith.shropshire) - they might be useful as stimulus for musical composition. Feel free to use them.
link

Other photographs of mine which are available for school use are at my Flickr account

Flickr link

Following recent work at the Sir John Talbot School and Technology College, colleagues might find the following summary very useful of the main characteristics of Assessment for Learning - link