Category Archives: Memory

Memory, Reading, Wider Connections

Just Like Buses

Psychology tests – you wait for ages, then three come along at once. In the wake of the VAK and Myers-Briggs tests at last Monday’s In-Service, I volunteered to take part in some research at the weekend – the snappily entitled, “UK Standardisation of Rivermead Behavioural Memory Test III and UK Validation Study of Delis-Kaplan Executive Function System.” I was drained just from reading the title. When the tests finished 3.5 hours later, I felt as though I’d been hit over the head with a mallet.
To cut a long title down to a short story, these are the simple facts: Continue reading Just Like Buses →

Concerts, Ensembles, Memory, Rhythm

First Showcase Rehearsal

I’ve spent many odd moments of this week finishing an ensemble arrangement for the first of six East Lothian Showcase Concert* rehearsals, which falls this Friday. Ironically, I heard this piece on Radio 3’s Making Tracks on the way home from one of last year’s rehearsals. No, I don’t have the memory of an idiot savant (only one half of that) I hunted down the piece and converted it from saxophone quartet version to guitar ensemble. Continue reading First Showcase Rehearsal →

Admin/Planning, Memory

Just For The Record

“You ask me if I keep a notebook to record my great ideas. I’ve only ever had one.” Albert Einstein (1879 – 1955)

“Why are our days numbered and not, say, lettered?” Woody Allen (b 1935)

Welcome to a one-day, non-Buddhist festival of attachment. In Exponential Blind Date I described the compiling of record of work books for my five schools. Had I been able at that point to attach files, I’d have done that and not described them. A picture paints a thousand words – at about a hundredth of the speed.

I’d like to attach them all here for two reasons: Continue reading Just For The Record →

Aural, Games, Language, Lesson Content, Listening, Memory

Games 5

“Nothing you can’t spell will ever work.” Will Rogers (1879 – 1935)

Spelling Games – where pupils:

  1. spell out in notes a word you have specified
  2. identify a word after you have played it in notes

Purpose:

  • to underline that the musical alphabet is the same as the everyday alphabet (indispensable to making sense of musical grammar – more of which another day)
  • to strengthen links to language
  • to improve (active) listening and aural memory

The spelling option sounds like a very complicated activity to mark, with several pupils simultaneously spelling out the same word with varying degrees of speed and accuracy. In reality, Continue reading Games 5 →

Aural, Games, Lesson Content, Memory

Games 1

“We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.” George Bernard Shaw (1856 – 1950)

Since beginning in the primary sector eight years ago, I’ve become a great believer in the power of musical games to animate young minds. How far into education should this go? Well, if you hope for the majority of a PhD viva to consist of games, you could be in for a lean afternoon. Apart from that, Continue reading Games 1 →

Memory, School Life

Please Enter Pin

Whenever anyone asks me what I do their response to my response is always the same. Once the baffling obsession with the word peripatetic is out of the way, people always say, “it must be nice not being stuck in one place all the time.” Nobody ever adds, “but I bet moving around has its challenges.”

There are two challenges which dwarf all others and, were I ever asked what a new recruit should look out for, I should highlight: Continue reading Please Enter Pin →