The Gift Caves

25/01/2021

16/11/2020

A HUGE thank you to the ten amazing learners who brought the inaugural ATOM 1 Roadshow to life on Saturday and Sunday! Congrats to them all for participating and completing it!

ENORMOUS thank you to teachers Robyn & Marisha for encouraging their students to come along, the parents for their support, and of course, Mary and Roanna from Tauranga Waldorf School for allowing us to use the fabulous venue!

Games, videos, animation, great sharing of all the game equipment, hoops, balls, teddy bears, bricks, blocks, and who could forget ALL those jellybeans and gummy sweets?

Do you want learners you know to learn Grade 1 music theory through games, child-centred, full colour, illustrated books and videos in a fun, lively atmosphere too?

Let me know! ATOM will come to you!

15/02/2019

https://leongraymusic.tumblr.com/post/182716052165/homework-the-unskilled-babysitter

Debates about homework have raged for decades now - are children doing too much or too little? Duke University’s Harris Cooper, in his 2006 study of homework and student achievement, found that lots of homework for 13-18 year olds positively correlated with improved study habits, attitudes toward ...

02/01/2018

24/09/2016

"Grades tend to sort and categorize students into winners and losers, without the redeeming grace of giving students detailed understandings of their strengths and challenges." Mel Pontious, Spotlight on Assessment in Music Education.

24/09/2016

"In fact, the itch for learning, so evident in the early elementary years, gradually disappears in later years when extrinsic rewards like grades get greater emphasis." Mel Pontious, Spotlight on Assessment in Music Education

24/09/2016

"Research shows that the focus on grades tends to devalue the learning itself. The grade becomes an extrinsic motivator, and when the grade itself is viewed as a reward, creativity, risk-taking, and careful attention to process are lost in favor of speed and the safe response." Mel Pontious, Spotlight on Assessment in Music Education.

24/09/2016

"The most pervasive problem with traditional grades is that the grade, not mastery, becomes the main concern... while [this] involves 'doing' music, which is good, the focus often becomes "getting a grade" for students by having them 'prove' their conpetence... this 'proving' tends to be a short-term concern instead of a longer-term mastery of skills." Mel Pontious, from 'Spotlight on Assessment in Music Education'

10/09/2016

I just found a fiction book in Italian at the bottom of a box. I know the alphabet in English which is the same as Italian, so surely all I have to do is combine the letters, say these combinations and I'll be fluent in Italian. But I'm not. Why? I need to know words, sentence structure and contexts to gain fluency.

Give music students a chance. Teach them to KNOW what music is made of. Take time to teach them about music's 'words' (intervals, chords), 'sentence structures' (melodies, bars, phrases), and 'contexts' (composition techniques, patterns, forms). Teaching a kid music without taking time to pull apart, and teach the skills and techniques built into the music they're learning is like teaching them to read by taking them just through the letters of the alphabet, then handing them 'War and Peace' to decipher.

Be the best student-centred teacher you can. Always. :-)