IB Music: Transforming the Listening and Performance Experience

September 19, 2016

Often students listen to music to manage their moods, enhance a workout or study session, bond with other students and as a distraction from daily life.  Are you listening to heavy metal as a means to relieve stress?  Researchers would have us believe that listening...

The Summer Bucket List for IB Music Teachers

July 15, 2016

The Summer Bucket List for IB Music Teachers Congratulations, you made it through a year of IB Music! Summer is finally here as you cruise through your summer bucket list. What’s next? After putting your feet up in your favorite chair, you may want to reflect;...

The Music of Summer: The Perfect Time To Jump Start IB Music

June 29, 2016

Totally excited about starting IB Music next year? IB music is a great course with numerous opportunities to learn and listen to different genres of music as well as study the contexts. Students learn performance repertoire as well as composing their own music. It...

Thematic development and transformation

October 7, 2015

Greetings DP Music teachers! I hope that our colleagues in the northern hemisphere are enjoying a happy return to school whilst our colleagues in the southern hemisphere are enjoying a productive year. The discussion today centres on thematic development and...

Music assessment objectives and assessment criteria

August 26, 2015

Greeting DP Music teachers! Today I would like to briefly discuss the assessment objectives in DP Music and how to use these objectives to develop rubrics. My discussion today is informed by my knowledge and understanding of the Middle Years Programme in the context...

Links and Depth (listening paper)

June 26, 2015

This post concerns students’ abilities to generate responses with the appropriate levels of depth when discussing the prescribed works. Using the approaches to learning skill – thinking – we can identify two skill descriptors that should be developed...