There are roughly 100 days to go before the GCSE and A-Level music exams for 2024. To be honest, the exact number of days isn’t the point, this blog is all about what we can do in the lead up to the exam.
If you speak to my students you will find out that I always like to break things down into chunks. I find this makes things more manageable and realistic for them. Working out the number of days and weeks can be really helpful. This then leads on to thinking about what can be done with 100 days to go.
Days, Weeks & Months
100 days works out to be about 3 months, or about 14 weeks. It is worth chatting with your students about this because it can help them to visualise the time they have left in year 11 or 13. the key thing is what are they going to do with 100 days to go?
There are several ways of thinking about this and I guess it will differ for every student. The next month for GCSE & A-Level is likely to be devoted to coursework. With deadlines looming it is important that they factor this in to the equation. But revision should also be starting soon in order to avoid last minute cramming.
A piece a week
Every exam board is different, but they will all have an element of set works. For Edexcel GCSE there are 8 set works, and at A-level 13. It might be useful for students to focus on revision a different set work every week. For A-Level my students therefore have enough weeks to cover all the set works in the lead up to the exam. For GCSE they can almost do this rotation twice in the 14 weeks before the exam.
This doesn’t need to be an exact science, but it could be a nice way to space things out for your students. As a department you can then ensure that your weekly revision sessions are linked to the set works. Spreading out revision will allow the students to spend adequate time on each set work. The exam might seem a long way off, but when you break it down and say 100 days to go, they will start to get the message.
Marginal Gains
I love the theory of marginal gains and I refer to it a great deal in my teaching. It is the simple idea that small changes can make a big difference. The theory was championed by Dave Brailsford, head of British Cycling and Team Sky. There is a lot you can read about the impact this had on cycling. In essence, he looked at the smallest details to make the biggest gains. Team Sky would consider how they can change small things, such as the pillows they sleep and mattresses they sleep on.
The topic of Marginal Gains is also covered by Matthew Syed in his excellent book “Black Box Thinking”.
Musical Gains
With respect to music, we need to train our students to think about marginal gains. What are the small things that they need to do in order to prepare for the exam. We are quite good at this as musicians, often looking at small things, like scales, changing a reed or tuning a string. Musicians seek out ways of making a bar, phrase or piece sound better by adjusting something potentially small.
We can therefore start to think about what musical gains we can make with 100 days to go
Examples of Marginal Gains.
Some examples of Marginal Gains might include:
- Adding dynamic markings to a composition
- Working on a weaker passage in a performance.
- Focussing on one element of music in revision
- Looking up 10 words that link to an element of music such as melody
- Add a key change to a composition
- Listen to a set work every day
- Use Focus on Sound for 10 minutes every day
Just 10 Minutes a day
My students roll their eyes when I say this, but I say it because it is true. Just 10 minutes a day can make a difference to our progress. 10 minutes is a marginal gain and something that we can all do.
Consider the 100 days we have left, that would total 1000 minutes of extra work. But this extra work is in small chunks of just ten minutes. 1000 minutes is nearly 17 hours of extra work, broken down into manageable pieces. This seems like an absolute game changer for students who want to make changes.
Encourage your students to think about what they could do with just 10 minutes a day focused on music. I doubt that they would normally find 17 hours in the weeks before the exam, but when spread out they might.
100 days to go
100 days to go, well I guess that depends on when you are reading this. But the principals and ideas in this blog will hopefully help you to help your students. We want to break down their learning, help them to revise and ultimately see them succeed. Lets strive to find those marginal gains and turn them in to musical gains.