4 Great Reasons to have African Drumming and Dance in Schools
If you’ve never experienced one of our Unbeatable Energy workshops before, you might never have considered the many ways that African Drumming and Dance can benefit children’s health, well-being and ability to succeed. Here are four reasons why an Unbeatable Energy workshop can help create a success in your classroom: 1. African Drumming and Dance brings cultural topics to life! 2. African Drumming and Dance boosts children’s confidence! 3. African Drumming and Dance gets children active which improves the brain! 4. African Drumming and Dance improves listening skills – not just in music! 1. African Drumming and Dance brings cultural topics to life! An African Drumming and Dance workshop provides a fantastic activity for Black History Month, an Africa topic or to include in a Cultural Diversity Day. It is an exhilarating experience for pupils and teachers alike when they make that first rumble all together with the African djembe hand drums. As each pupil plays on their hand made drum, they discover a whole world of history, tradition and culture – not just by passively listening or reading, but by actively playing and participating. This way they really experience the ethnic tradition and culture of West Africa. To quote a recent Headteacher at one of our schools ‘it is the hands-on activities like African drumming which children really take away and remember from cultural topics because they become active participants in the music as opposed to merely spectators.’ 2. African Drumming and Dance boosts children’s confidence! It happens frequently in workshops – a child who really struggles with maths and literacy, or is shy and socially disengaged in class, completely transforms in a drumming session. It is as if they have finally found the thing that ‘pulls’ them emotionally and gives them a sense of release. African Dance is also a fantastic way for children to build their self-belief. Dancers normally perform to a crowd either on their own or accompanied by one or two other dancers. In our workshops, children are invited to dance to their peers in the space inside the drum circle. This part of the workshop is entirely optional for pupils, but we provide some gentle encouragement by saying that the experience will make them one feel great afterwards. After a few of the more confident children have given it a try, we start to see a cascade of other children all wanting to have a go. In this way, some of the most shy and reclusive children amaze everyone by jumping into the circle and sharing their joy of the beat! The smiles on children’s faces after this session speaks volumes about their sense of achievement! 3. African Drumming and Dance gets children active which improves the brain! African Drumming and Dance is a fantastic way to for children to exercise and channel their energy. African djembe drumming builds strength and stamina in the upper body while dance improves cardiovascular fitness and is an all-over body workout. Obviously this is great for enhancing children’s fitness and wellbeing, but studies show that such exercise sharpens the mind; makes for happier children and improves their performance in other areas such as maths and literacy. 4. African Drumming and Dance improves listening skills – not just in music! It is a typical thing which you hear a teacher say in class music lessons – ‘listen!’ For good reason too because good listening is crucial. Like all music, learning African drumming is great for building a variety of listening skills. For example the ability to focus listening on an individual pattern within a poly-rhythmic piece of music (multiple rhythms being played simultaneously) or developing the listening skills required to understand the feeling of a rhythm when hearing against a regular pulse. Whatever the type of listening required, there is a common personal attribute that becomes essential for any budding musician – the ability to give oneself time to reflect and process what has been heard. Experienced African drummers who are learning something new always give themselves time to listen before they start playing, because they are all too aware that their mind can quickly make wrong assumptions of what they have heard, based on what they already know. Although the children often find it hard to resist playing straight away! The great thing is that children can not only improve their listening in music through African Drumming, but can also apply the same skill to social situations – for example in conversation. By giving yourself time to hear what someone is saying, you can stop one’s internal chatter from making assumptions; truly absorb what someone is being said and then create a greater sense of rapport – this is called ‘active listening’ a great life skill for a child to learn at an early age! If you are a school who would love a day of African drumming and dance workshops for your pupils or have an Africa Topic or Black History event coming up and think we could help, we’d love to hear from you! Visit us at http://www.unbeatable-energy.co.uk/education/ Special offer: 10% discount if your school books a workshop in September and October 2016. Just quote ‘QA Magazine’ in your enquiry to us to receive the discount.
Performance related pay: make it fair and transparent
Recent research released by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) and the National Union of Teachers (NUT) revealed that one in 12 teachers have been denied a salary increase since performance-related pay (PRP) was introduced in 2014. With the power and responsibility of PRP being given to schools, Damien Roberts, business development director at Schoolip by Derventio, looks at how teaching staff can gather the right information throughout the performance cycle, ensuring that the process is fair and transparent. Before its introduction in 2014, there was a lot of speculation amongst teachers around the PRP process and how it would work, so these statistics come as no surprise to me. It’s important for schools to examine this reaction and ensure staff understand exactly what needs to be done in order to achieve their objectives for pay progression. Damien Roberts Performance management in schools is traditionally initiated at the beginning of the academic year, but beyond the odd email or discussion in passing, the process often gets lost amongst the preoccupations of teaching, lesson planning and exam preparation. Schools should consider a system that combines the whole process in a central online system which can track progress, store evidence and maintain a constant dialogue between the staff member and their line manager. This will allow staff to highlight achievements or flag issues as and when they arise, as well as altering objectives at any point if needs be. Having an online blog to talk to one another ascertains a very transparent way of ensuring that everything is recorded, and can be used to reinforce outcomes from face-to-face meetings. While the ATL research found that over half of teachers believed that PRP increased their workload, this shouldn’t be the case if a school has an effective and efficient process in place. Removing the need for paper-based evidence and portfolios, and offering technology such as smartphone apps will help to put the power back into teachers’ hands and reduce the overall burden, allowing them to focus on the main priority: teaching their students. Making the process as accessible as possible for staff is also important. Nowadays, most people own a smartphone, and the ability to record evidence digitally using mobiles and upload it directly to an online system can help to reduce laborious paper administration. This way, nothing gets lost throughout the year and can easily be retrieved when staff need to demonstrate how they have met their objectives. Evidence can come in the form of photographs of students work or wall displays; after all, it’s important for OFSTED to walk into a classroom and see that the walls are teaching the students before the lesson has even begun. Evidence can even be shared through video, especially for lessons which may be harder to articulate and visualise on paper, for example, recording students doing coaching exercises during a PE lesson. Not only can this be used as evidence, but also shared as best practice with other teachers. To make PRP as fair as possible for staff, schools should consider software which is able to inform staff and their line managers when they might be missing specific evidence for objectives. This means ahead of the end-of-year review, the teacher knows whether or not they’ve hit their target, so it won’t come as a surprise if they haven’t quite met pay progression. With efficient and simple ways of incorporating all areas of performance management, schools can be completely transparent with staff, enabling them to understand exactly what needs to be accomplished throughout the year. With digital capabilities in place, rather than staff feeling the burden of having to provide paper-based evidence, they can provide as much as they want, confident in the knowledge that they’re meeting both theirs and the schools overall objectives. SchooliP by Derventio brings together the three main elements of school improvement including: performance management, improvement planning and self-evaluation. It helps to improve the standard of teaching and learning within schools by providing the tools to support teachers with organising their evidence for appraisal and pay progression. For more information, visit: www.schoolip.co.uk