Guide to Music Department Resources

Music Department Resources is a comprehensive curriculum website for secondary music teachers. It houses over 300 specialist teaching materials and non-specialist cover lessons designed specifically for KS3, GCSE, and A Level.

Who is the website aimed at?

  • Experienced educators who know what they’re doing, but are short on time, and simply need to be able to put their hands on dependable, well-crafted materials
  • ECTs and those seeking QTS or undertaking ITT courses, who are looking for trustworthy models, supporting guidance and off-the-peg curriculum resources, to get started in the profession
  • Mentors, tutors and advisors looking to point trainees and ECTs in the right direction

What MDR offers:

KS3

  • A fully resourced three year curriculum, focusing on the development of students’ musical understanding through the integration of analytical listening, rehearsing, performing, improvising, composing and arranging. Schemes of work feature teaching materials, supporting teacher notes, formative assessment tools, and summative listening tests.
  • Progressive listening homework tasks, designed to strengthen students’ use of musical vocabulary, confidence in reading and using staff notation, ear training and aural skills.
  • Cover lessons, designed in partnership with experienced cover managers, for delivery by non-specialists. Each resource includes step-by-step teacher instructions, embedded extracts of music, analytical listening questions, a guide to the musical vocabulary pertinent to the lesson, and additional supporting resources to help things run smoothly.

GCSE

  • A collection of composition teaching resources and workshops, designed to provide students with plenty of models, examples and hands-on composing experience, enabling them to generate, develop, and refine well-crafted compositions.
  • Element-focused teaching materials, designed to match the demands of ‘unfamiliar listening’ questions across specifications, featuring examples, questions and wider listening playlists, paired with targeted revision and homework tasks to consolidate learning.
  • Cover lessons, for delivery by non-specialists, featuring a warm-up quiz to inform students of how their understanding of specialist musical language is developing, ‘listening and appraising’ questions and answers, accompanied by embedded extracts and opportunities to identify specific areas for development.
  • AQA, Edexcel, Eduqas and OCR AOS-specific teaching materials featuring thumbprints of styles and genres, in-context analytical listening, aural perception, ensemble performing, improvising, arranging and composing exercises, ‘free composition’ starting points, and exam-style appraising questions.
  • AQA, Edexcel, Eduqas and OCR AOS-specific revision materials for class work, cover lessons and independent study.

A Level

  • Aural perception exercises, designed to develop and strengthen students’ skills and experience in melodic and rhythmic dictation, intervals, chords, keys, cadences, and compositional device identification, brought into context with questions on style, genre, purpose and provenance.
  • A chorale harmonisation course with worked and annotated examples, exercises, test questions and guidance on ways of working both methodically and musically.
  • AQA ‘unfamilair listening’ ten mark questions, with embedded extracts and accompanying mark schemes. Useful for classwork discussion and salient point ‘gathering’ exercises, refining prose writing, homework, revision and testing.
  • Edexcel ‘section A’ style questions and answers. Useful as a starting point for classroom discussion and assessment, meaningful annotation of a full score, as a framework for writing similar practice questions, as a way of getting to know how to maximise marks, and respond to a range of command words in short answer responses.
  • Edexcel ‘section B’ exam-style practice questions for both ‘unfamilair music’ and set works (Q5 and 6), including opening paragraph material, essay structure hints and tips, research starting points, and wider listening playlists.

Other bits and pieces

  • Hand-drawn vector graphics for displays, KS3 student booklets, GCSE and A level course handbooks.
  • A series of blog posts sharing teaching pedagogy, strategies and approaches, the thinking behind curriculum choices, progression, sequencing, use of summative and formative assessment, and ways of explaining and demonstrating to a non-specialist what all of this looks and sounds like in the music classroom.

Free stuff:

You can access the following resources with no email log in:

1. KS3 year 7 unit 1 scheme of work

View resource

Complete scheme of work for year 7 term 1

2. KS3 year 7 'Homework and Revision' resource

View resource

Task 1 - year 7 first half term

3. KS3 cover lesson

View resource

Complete 60 minute cover lesson, designed for non-specialist delivery

4. GCSE 'elements' teaching resource

View resource

Part of a compilation of GCSE 'Elements' teaching materials, designed for specialist delivery

5. GCSE 'listening and appraising' practice question

View resource

One of 32 incremental GCSE 'listening and appraising' practice questions

6. A Level harmony exercise

View resource

Sample lesson from the A level chorale harmonisation course

7. A Level aural perception

View resource

Four of 40 aural perception questions, featuring melodic and rhythmic dictation, identification of compositional devices, keys, chord types, harmonic progressions and the location and correction of pitch errors

8. A Level skeleton score practice question

View resource

Edexcel-specific 'section A' style questions and answers.

9. A Level essay practice question

View resource

Edexcel-specific 'section B' style 'unfamiliar music' questions and answers, essay writing guidance and supporting wider listening playlists

10. Circle of Fifths

View resource

Example illustration

11. 'Rosenshine the Musician'

View resource

Example blog post from a series on teaching approaches, whole-school CPD tips and whatnot

More free stuff:

Open a free account to access another 30 resources for nothing.

Open a free account

Subscribe:

If MDR looks like it's your cup of tea, and you want to start a paid subscription and access 300+ resources, simply sign up, log in to your free account, and select a plan that suits you.

Choose a plan

(cover pictures by Kiwihug on Unsplash)